- General Motors is spending billions of dollars to electrify.
- Startup Blink Charging just landed a deal with the automaker to to help dealers get plugged in.
- The startup's CEO convinced GM to work — now he's focused on his next steps.
General Motors is intent on making the transition to electric cars over the next decade, and it knows how critical its dealers are to that ambition. But GM dealers preparing for the shift face challenges like the steep cost and risk of being too proactive on installing charging that could become obsolete.
To ease the burden, GM has teamed up with electric car charging startup Blink. The automaker has recommended its dealers use the Miami Beach, Florida company to handle the charging they'll need for the future.
Blink has grown steadily since its $18.5 million IPO in 2018, but remains one of the smaller players in the field (it has about 1,600 locations in the US, compared with competitor ChargePoint's 27,000). It has struggled with profitability, due to high deployment costs and slow EV adoption. Teaming up with GM will help it grow the more than 30,000 charging ports it has installed globally, and do much to validate its tech and strategy.
"These buyers of GM vehicles over the next few years are going to interact and see Blink charging stations," Blink CEO Michael Farkas said. "It's going to give them confidence to use our charging stations in the public domain, as well as when they want to install charging stations in their homes."
The charging space has a few other major players, with EVgo, Volta, and Electrify America and more competing with Blink, and the stakes are high. It's an industry McKinsey estimates could hit $150 billion to $200 billion across North America, Europe, and China by the end of the decade.
For GM, selecting Blink was also strategic. Its dealers can better prepare for EVs by using a startup they know was vetted, without having to do the research and selection process themselves, or work with utilities. (Dealers are still responsible for the cost of chargers for their stores.)
So far, 1,000 of GM's 4,500 dealers in the US and Canada have purchased 1,500 Blink chargers.
Farkas told Insider he made three key points in his winning sales pitch to GM. He's planning on using them to further the company in the future:
Longevity
GM dealers are preparing for the automaker's $35 billion pivot to EVs by investing thousands of dollars in charging and training EV-focused sales and service personnel. But some worry there's a risk to overinvesting in technology that might become obsolete.
"When GM has to ask their dealership network to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to outfit their dealerships with charging stations, they want to make sure that they're going to be there for a really long time," Farkas said, "and that there's not gonna be something a little bit faster the next year and the year after, where they're constantly going to have to upgrade the chargers."
Blink won't require new hardware as quickly, because it already offers a higher power output. At the same time, it reduces charge times for much-anticipated EVs like the Cadillac Lyriq and GMC Hummer.
Upgradeability
Second, as the country migrates to 5G cell networks, some chargers will require updates. Blink's don't.
"We're able to change modules that allow you to keep that same charger there, while being able to take advantage of the new communication technologies that the different cell phone providers upgrade to," Farkas said.
"Our hardware is engineered just like your cell phone to be able to have upgradeability over the air."
Strategy
Third, Blink both manufactures hardware and owns and operates the infrastructure — an advantage in that the company doesn't rely on selling new models every year.
"When you sell hardware, you want your customers to upgrade that hardware constantly," Farkas said.
"We develop hardware as an owner and operator where we want it to last in the field as long as possible, because we make our money off the sale of electricity."
