The world’s largest automaker Volkswagen, China’s oldest automaker FAW, and another Chinese automaker called JAC which manufactures electric vehicles for Nio, established a joint venture in Changzhou, East China’s Jiangsu province together with Star Charge, one of China’s leading EV chargers, on Thursday, according to a press release by Volkswagen.
Neither party has revealed financial details on the JV. What we know is that it’s called CAMS and aims to build up a brand new smart charging infrastructure ecosystem in China.
CAMS aims to provide households with charging wallboxes, which are devices EV owners can put into their garages. But it also plans to install fast charging facilities in public charging stations, allowing 15-minute charging for a 400 km range.
Building charging facilities fits into these automakers’ plans to grow the share of EVs in their product lineup. Volkswagen set itself the goal to become “the leading mobility company in the electric, connected era” by 2025.
Nio, which sells only EVs, announced in April that it will launch EV charging services in 41 cities, including a mobile EV charging service priced at RMB 380 (USD 57) and designated charging points costing RMB 280 (USD 42) per session.
As sales of EVs are growing in China, which is already the largest EV market in the world, companies in the mobility sector have all turned their attention to the EV charging sector and are busy forming alliances to gain an upper hand.
Before joining the “CAMS alliance”, Star Charge, which has more than 30,000 charging stations, stopped supporting Didi Chuxing’s EV charging network. Didi has 600,000 EVs working with its ride-hailing platform, which is the largest nationwide.
After that, Didi formed a strategic tie with China Southern Power Grid to build charging facilities.
The two companies later allied with China’s Hainan province to provide comprehensive EV service solutions, including charging, in the tropical island, which has targeted 2030 as the deadline to phase out all traditional gasoline vehicles.