Korea’s SK E&S opens 1st US EV charging stations with Avis

South Korea’s SK E&S Co. opened its first electric vehicle charging station in the US in a partnership with Avis Budget Group, a major American car rental company, to seek a future growth engine in the world’s third-largest EV market.

SK E&S said on Sunday EverCharge Inc., its EV charging subsidiary in the US, started operations of chargers at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas.

In March last year, the natural gas business unit of South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate SK Group, acquired EverCharge through PassKey Inc., a unit of its US subsidiary SK E&S Americas, to make inroads into the EV charging business there.

“The collaboration between Avis Budget Group and EverCharge is intended to provide the infrastructure needed for a clear pathway to cleaner forms of transportation for rental customers,” said SK Group Vice Chairman and Head of US Corporate Government Affairs Yu Jeong-joon in a statement.

The partnership between Avis and EverCharge at the Houston airport is designed to serve as a model for scalable fleet electrification planning at airports across the US.

RAPID GROWTH

Following the launch at the Houston airport, Avis and EverCharge plan to extend this partnership to additional airport locations this year.

The US EV charging infrastructure market is expected to grow by an average of 27% a year with the number of chargers forecast to more than tenfold to 20 million by 2030 from 1.8 million in 2020, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation, an independent nonprofit organization.

EverCharge’s patented load balancing software, SmartPower, enables large-scale, networked EV charging by managing and controlling electric loads, analyzing the charging patterns of EVs and intelligently allocating available power based on the individual vehicle’s need.

SmartPower empowers EverCharge partners to install more stations than would be available with traditional charging systems, without a strain on the existing energy grid or the need for costly utility upgrades.

Write to Kyung-Min Kang at kkm1026@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.