Canada’s Infrastructure Bank (CIB) has invested $220m in FLO, a Quebec City-based electric vehicle (EV) charging network operator, to build over 2,000 “ultra-fast” charging ports in public places in the next four years, with its primary focus being the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
The chargers are set to be distributed at about 400 sites across the country, generally located on busy highways and travel corridors, as reported by The Toronto Star.
FLO aims that its chargers would charge most EVs to 80 percent in 15 minutes, potentially easing “range anxiety” for Canadian drivers and increasing EV adoption. “We’ve been around for almost 15 years now, we’ve demonstrated the ability to give great service and we know what we’re doing,” said Louis Tremblay, FLO CEO, in a statement given to The Toronto Star. “We’re going to try, through our process, to well serve that market (the GTA) that we strongly believe in the long run will be the biggest market.”
The company has about 23 percent of the Canadian EV charging market share, and already owns more than 90,000 charging stations across North America, mostly in Canada. The investment from the CIB is its first from a dedicated EV charging fund, and will double the number of public fast-charging ports in Canada.
Ontario has been slower to adopt EVs than Quebec and British Columbia, but FLO sees potential in the Greater Toronto Area. Tremblay added that FLO will make location decisions based on several factors, including deep data the company has collected from its existing network.
Image credit: FLO
Source: The Toronto Star