Costco is trying EV charging once again, adding DC fast chargers to its new warehouse store in Ridgefield, Washington, reported Kron 4.
Costco offers branded gas at its store locations, and according to Kron 4, “Costco isn’t new to EV charging. It was one of the first big-box retailers—in the late 1990s—to install destination (L2) charging stations at many of its California locations. Most of those didn’t have J1772 connectors to plug easily into the Nissan Leaf and, with an adapter, the Tesla Model S, but Costco instead opted to pull the plug on its EV chargers in 2011 and 2012.”
Costco has partnered with firm Electric Era, which said it was able to deploy the EV charging infrastructure in seven weeks. According to the company, that installation timeframe is shorter than that of a Tesla Supercharger station’s average of 17 weeks.
“Electric Era calls itself an ‘end-to-end EV charging solution partner.’ It builds battery storage into its charging stations from the start, with software utilizing AI to help manage load and keep it under a particular peak. It boasts that this station will deliver 98%+ uptime per port,” the news outlet wrote.
Electric Era said it has “autonomous monitoring of its stations ‘via high-rate telemetry’ and 24/7 on-call operators who can troubleshoot and dispatch.” It also said it offers customizable 32-inch full-screen displays for personalized messaging and promotions.