EV charging company teams up with grocer Metro

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Quebec City-based electric-vehicle charging company AddÉnergie Technologies Inc. is partnering with Metro Inc. to build fast chargers at 130 grocery locations in Quebec and Ontario, but the deal also marks a shift in strategy since the company will own and operate the hardware.

AddÉnergie (better known as Flo) has been designing, building and selling chargers since 2009, but it has largely steered clear of owning and operating them. Now, chief executive Louis Tremblay said his company has enough data that it can accurately predict utilization rates for charging stations and plans to start expanding its network.

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“The same charger that has been installed for 10 years, it’s generating more sales, more usage right now,” he said.

Flo owns about 500 charging stations, which is less than one per cent of the 100,000-plus chargers it has manufactured since being founded in 2009. But Tremblay said it is now aiming to significantly increase its ownership in the next three years.

Tremblay did not provide a target number of chargers, but said the business model will shift. The company already manufactures both the software and hardware for its chargers, and will continue selling many of them to EV owners who want one in their homes and to commercial properties, but he said he expects it to own and operate as much as 25 per cent of its charging network within three to four years.

“Ninety-nine-plus per cent of our chargers have been bought by customers,” he said, “but now … we feel it’s the right time in the market” to start expanding our own charging network.

Through the partnership with grocery chain Metro, Flo will install more than 500 Ultra fast-charging ports — which can bring an EV battery to within 80 per cent of its capacity in 15 minutes — at 130 stores, including Food Basics, Super-C, Metro and Marché Adonis, in Quebec and Ontario.

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The deal follows an announcement in April 2023 when the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) agreed to loan Flo $220 million to expand its owned-and-operated EV charging network.

Under the deal, Flo agreed to install 1,900 of its Ultra 320-kilowatt chargers — each of which has two ports — at 400 locations along transportation corridors and in suburban and urban communities with populations greater than 20,000, according to the CIB release.

Tremblay said the CIB deal will help Flo demonstrate that owning a charging network can be profitable, adding that so far it has been difficult to convince private investors of this.

“There is a return on investment,” he said. “It’s just that we needed some capital and traditional investment wasn’t there.”

The company faces other challenges, too.

Construction on the chargers at the 130 Metro locations is set to begin in August, but Tremblay said it will likely take at least three years to finish.

In many cases, he said the electrical grid may need upgrades to accommodate the charging stations since each port will have 320 kilowatts of power available, or 500 kilowatts of power if daisy-chained together.

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“We’re working against the clock,” he said.

Canada’s charging network needs are expected to significantly increase in the next few years as more EVs hit the road. The sector needs $20 billion of investment over the next three decades, according to a study on Canada’s projected EV charging needs by Montreal-based consultancy Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors.

“We see a need for a significant acceleration in charging infrastructure deployment over the next five to 10 years in order to support the federal government’s target of achieving 100 per cent EV market share of new light-duty vehicle sales by 2035,” the report said.

• Email: gfriedman@postmedia.com

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