Shift Magazine - Issue 2 2018 - 17

Nissan and Adopt a Charger
partnered to provide charging to
California EV owners.

ORGANIC GROWTH

Communicating with potential outside collaborators now happens throughout General
Motors, too, said Chevrolet spokeswoman Katie
Amann. The growth has been organic and now
spans different groups within the company.
"It's definitely evolved from more of a

community-based approach when we were
looking at the launch of the Gen 1 Volt to a
larger, more national approach now that we
have Bolt EV on sale in all 50 states," she said.
"We have people who will be out at conferences where people will come up and talk to
us, and we have our marketing colleagues who
are actively pursuing the relationships with the
AeroVironments of the world or working with
ChargePoint to make sure that we're providing
information to our customers."
Honda has invested millions in hydrogen-fuel
station developer FirstElement Fuel and works
with Leviton, which makes home charging
stations. In September, Honda and Toyota
announced a collaboration with Shell to install
seven H2 stations in California.
"We're doing a lot of those, and now you've
got the bigger players coming in," said Steven
Center, vice president of American Honda
Motor's connected and environmental business

Wieck

success. "It's not for lack of trying," she said.
For Nissan, working with Adopt a Charger
was a learning process as well. Brian Maragno,
Nissan's director of EV marketing and sales
strategy, once appeared in a video promoting
the Adopt a Charger collaboration.
But Nissan has learned it can do relationship
building on its own. It deals with larger partners
whose projects have a bigger scope.
"Those relationships were not the traditional
relationships that a car company was used to,
not the kind that a not-for-profit, environmentally focused organization was prone to work
with," he said. "We all came together under the
vision for the future of mobility, which is electric
cars. Today, the scope has changed a little bit,
meaning we do more of it. We do more partnerships and they tend to be a bit larger now."
As an example, Maragno said Nissan
recently got a call from the developers of senior
living properties. Through their research, they
found that potential residents want on-site EV
charging.
"Those sorts of opportunities are beautiful,
because it's always helpful when you have a private owner do their homework," he said.

Bloomberg

Charging electric vehicles
involves several players,
including charger makers
and utility companies.

development office. "Shell's a big player and
they've got a huge geographic footprint. All of
this seeding is starting to bring the big capital."
The people that developed these deals are
now working on other mobility issues. Nissan's
Maragno said he's one of many at the automaker who have moved around in different
roles that include partnerships or alliances with
an eye toward a new way of thinking and the
new world of mobility.
"People within our organization, after having
done electric cars for some time, are now
moving into the next frontier of autonomous
drive and have that experience and that mindset of cross-collaboration with organizations
outside the traditional car business," he said.
"These are people who are familiar with, comfortable with, and open to the idea of reaching
out to and being receptive to forging what had
been these kinds of nontraditional partnerships.
That experience has benefited us." ■

We all came
together under the
vision for the future
of mobility, which is
electric cars..
Brian Maragno

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - Issue 2 2018