Dive Brief:

• Northleaf Capital Partners committed $200 million to take a majority stake in EVPassport, supporting its capital needs and the expedited expansion of its electric vehicle charging systems. 
• The company, which deploys Level 2 and Level 3 EV chargers across North America, has scaled its network to 35 states as well as Canada and Mexico since its inception in 2020. 
• With the funding, EVPassport aims to expand its infrastructure-as-a-service model’s footprint throughout the country, providing EV revenue sharing to property owners and charging infrastructure to users through app-less QR codes.

Dive Insight:

EVPassport says it has already deployed 5,000 chargers in the hospitality, retail and multi-family sectors. Its existing customers include Viejas Casino and Resort, National Development, Ace Parking, Millennium Park Garages and Nuveen.

Northleaf, which has invested $5 billion in infrastructure assets to date, acquired a controlling stake in EVPassport. Northleaf was introduced to EVPassport through Millennium, a 10,000-space underground parking garage that is one of its portfolio companies, according to TechCrunch. 

“Under EVPassport’s IaaS framework, site host customers are able to offer an increasingly critical transportation amenity to tenants or clients, while individual charging users benefit from strong reliability, high uptime, and customer-driven features,” Olivier Laganiere, managing director at Northleaf, stated in the release. 

EVPassport provides EV charging infrastructure and 50% of charging revenue to property owners through a subscription-based fee model, with an average contract length of about 10 years, TechCrunch reported. Laganiere said that this long-term contracted model, which provides customers with cash, aligns with Northleaf’s existing infrastructure strategy. 

Charging infrastructure is pivotal to meet the demands of electric vehicles in the coming decade. The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates the need for up to 35 million charging ports to facilitate the adoption of up to 42 million EVs expected by 2030. Due to this need, EV infrastructure firms, energy management platforms and real estate owners are increasingly working together to install the chargers through revenue-sharing agreements.

As it moves forward, EVPassport plans to deploy another 1,000 DC chargers and 10,000 Level 2 chargers in the next two years, with a focus on areas with high EV adoption, such as California, Texas, Florida, Chicago and the Northeast corridor, according to TechCrunch. The company also committed to building a charging hub with over 400 plugs on a site at the Viejas Casino and Resort in California. It expects the station to be operational in spring 2024.