Gravity to implement 500 kW EV charger ‘trees’ on US streets to grow network larger than Tesla’s
NY-based startup and EV infrastructure specialist Gravity has launched a new line of universal EV charger “trees” it hopes will bring convenient charging sessions curbside on city streets. The deployment will start modestly, but Gravity is targeting a street charging network that is ” more expansive than Tesla’s current Supercharger network.”
Gravity Inc. is a startup focused on sustainable fleets and the infrastructure required to operate them efficiently. In 2021, Gravity began rolling out a fleet of all-electric Mustang Mach-E yellow cabs around New York City while partnering with building owners and parking operators to implement electric vehicle charging infrastructure to support individual drivers and large EV fleets.
At that time, Gravity was already teasing plans to open the “only true fast-charging site in Manhattan” to support the taxis and local EV owners. In October 2023, Gravity released a full suite of 500kW EV chargers, some of the fastest we’ve seen.
This technology caught the eye of Google Ventures (GV), which led to a successful seed funding round for an undisclosed amount a month later. Since then, Gravity has been able to roll out dozens of UL-Listed EV chargers in the US and made good on its word to open access to 24 500kW EV chargers at a new “Gravity Charging Center” opened this past March—hailing the piles as the fastest in the United States.
The charging center operates out of a Manhattan parking garage in which Gravity mounted its 500kW Distributed Energy Access Points (DEAPs) to the ceiling above existing parking spaces. Today, Gravity announces it has adapted its DEAP EV chargers into “trees” that can be easily installed curbside to make charging even faster and more convenient for city drivers.
Gravity is rolling out EV charger “trees” in the US
The startup shared details of its latest EV charger rollout today, which includes 200kW and 500kW distributed energy access points as part of a universal on-street cable and mounting system.
These EV charging trees have a hinged swing arm that houses a cable that pivots down for curbside sessions. This offers local drivers easy access from the street, no matter their make, model, or port location. When a charging session is completed, the arm raises automatically, and the EV connector latches back onto the pole, out of sight and out of the way for passersby to trip over.
Gravity engineers worked alongside design firm Rangr Studio to develop the EV charger trees to alleviate issues some curbside chargers face around the globe. However, the network of this particular type of charger remains relatively small in the US, at least for now.
Given such a small scale in North America, Gravity believes even a modest rollout of its new EV charger trees will help it become the largest fast-charging network in the US. The startup boldly said that its goal is to expand the DEAP footprint to one day be more prominent than Tesla’s Supercharger network – one of the most prominent and dependable in the country. Gravity Inc.’s founder and CEO Moshe Cohen elaborated:
Right now, American cities are choosing the curbside charging that drivers will use for decades to come. Unfortunately, many are looking to obsolete overnight Level 2 charging with cables that clutter sidewalks and that don’t fit the needs of urban EV drivers. EV drivers require and deserve so much better. We took up the challenge of making every aspect of the on-street charging experience faster and better and can’t wait to deploy our new DEAP Trees by the thousands. With even partial adoption by American cities, this product alone could quickly become the largest fast charging network in America, eclipsing even the Supercharger network.
Similar to the parking garage infrastructure in New York, Gravity’s EV charger trees do not require any utility upgrades for installation and can deliver up to 200 miles of range in 13 minutes on a 200kW charger or 5 minutes on a 500kW charger. These rates are far faster than the Tesla Superchargers currently operating around NYC, which deliver charge rates between 72kW and 150kW.
Both EV charger tree systems deliver 1,000V and are bidirectional-ready, offering future opportunities to send access energy back to city grids. Look for EV charger trees curbside, especially in New York City, and let us know if you spot one!
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Recurrent Energy has secured $513 million in financing for Arizona’s largest standalone battery storage project.
Solar and battery storage developer, owner, and operator Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ), secured financing for its Papago Storage project in Maricopa County, Arizona.
The financing includes a $249 million construction and term loan, a $163 million tax equity bridge loan, and a $101 million letter of credit facility.
Construction of the 1,200 MWh Papago Storage is expected to start in Q3 2024 and come online in Q2 2025. The project holds a 20-year tolling agreement with electric utility Arizona Public Service Company and is expected to create 200 construction jobs.
Recurrent will own and operate Papago Storage once it’s complete. The project will dispatch enough power for around 244,000 homes for four hours a day in support of renewable energy.
Ismael Guerrero, CEO of Recurrent Energy, said, “When we began developing Papago Storage in 2016, the Arizona storage market was in its infancy. Today, Arizona is one of the fastest-growing markets for energy storage in the United States, bolstered by the state’s expanding economy and cost-effective renewable energy resources.
“Today, we are thrilled to see nearly a decade of planning culminate in financing what will be the largest energy storage project in Arizona. We appreciate the continued support from our partners Nord/LB and MUFG in our shared mission to advance the clean energy transition.”
Read more: Oxford sets a new world record for solar panel efficiency
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Elon Musk claims Tesla’s new AI supercluster will grow to over 500 MW, making it one of, if not the biggest in the world. At the same time, the CEO claims Tesla is achieving some record-breaking performance with its next-en AI chip.
A few months ago, we reported that Tesla was having issues building a new expansion at Gigafactory Texas to house a new giant supercomputer to train Tesla’s AI.
At the time, we heard that Tesla was aiming for a 100 MW cluster to be ready by August. Musk canceled other projects at Tesla to focus construction resources on the expansion.
Commenting on drone videos of the expansion, Musk said that it will grow to over 500 MW over the next 18 months:
Sizing for ~130MW of power & cooling this year, but will increase to >500MW over next 18 months or so. Aiming for about half Tesla AI hardware, half Nvidia/other. Play to win or don’t play at all.
We previously noted that it was strange that Tesla was internally referring to the project as a Dojo project, which refers to Tesla’s own supercomputing hardware, but sources were also told that the cluster would use Nvidia compute power.
Now, Musk confirmed that Tesla plans to use both its own hardware and Nvidia’s, as well as other suppliers.
However, things are getting a little unclear as Musk seems to also imply that Tesla will use some of its HW4 computers for the training clusters:
HW4 generally refers to Tesla’s in-car computer with an in-house designed chip, while Dojo is used for training, like this new cluster.
It’s unclear here if Musk is talking about using inference computing for training or just talking about Tesla’s overall planned computing power.
Electrek’s Take
Elon had mentioned at Tesla’s shareholders meeting that the company now had Nvidia-level AI chips, but the stock didn’t even move from that announcement as Nvidia became the most valuable company in the world.
I think Tesla’s AI effort is still not super credible for the market. That happens when you claim that you are about to achieve self-driving by the end of the year every year for the past 5 years.
At this point, we need to see Tesla make significant improvements to FSD with each new update. It sounded like this new cluster would help achieve that but Elon also recently said that Tesla was not compute-constrained for training right now, so it’s hard to really understand what is holding up improvements at this point.
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