Skip to main content

ReachNow installs 20 public EV charging stations in Seattle

BMW’s ReachNow car-sharing service has installed the first of 20 Light & Charge electric vehicle (EV) charging locations in Seattle, US, as part of a US$1.2 million investment by the BMW Group. Seattle is the first city in North America to make the award-winning Light & Charge system, which turns existing streetlights into EV charging stations, available to the public.
May 23, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
BMW’s ReachNow car-sharing service has installed the first of 20 Light & Charge electric vehicle (EV) charging locations in Seattle, US, as part of a US$1.2 million investment by the BMW Group. Seattle is the first city in North America to make the award-winning Light & Charge system, which turns existing streetlights into EV charging stations, available to the public.


The Light & Charge system, developed by BMW together with its partner, eluminocity US, transforms existing street and parking lot light poles into connected nodes on a smart city network. The system combines LED lighting, EV charging and a sensor bus that senses various parameters and connects the site to the cloud. The sensor bus also provides edge-computing power for other connected devices nearby.

In Seattle, each Light & Charge site will include one ChargePoint DC Fast Charger and two to four AC, Level II chargers. The chargers all run on the ChargePoint network and will all be available to the public and compatible with any EV that has a standard SAE J1772 charging port.

The addition of Light & Charge stations in Seattle will also allow ReachNow to expand its shared fleet of EVs. Today, the electric BMW i3 vehicle makes up 10 per cent of the total ReachNow fleet and, with less than a year on the road, ReachNow’s shared electric fleet claims to have saved more than 55 tons of CO2 emissions.

Related Content

  • European cooperative logistics solutions project launched
    February 10, 2014
    Ertico, together with 33 partners, has today launched the EU funded Co-Gistics project, a deployment activity that will unite logistics with cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS). This is the first time that a European project has been fully dedicated to deployment of cooperative services applied to logistics. to be piloted in seven of Europe’s leading logistics centres, Arad, Bordeaux, Bilbao, Frankfurt, Thessaloniki, Trieste and Vigo, Co-Gistics will target the needs of the freight indust
  • TomTom banishes range anxiety
    March 16, 2021
    High-quality routing and weather information is going to be vital in persuading drivers that electric vehicles will not let them down, thinks TomTom’s Robin van den Berg
  • Kapsch outlines tolling options to combat traffic congestion
    January 11, 2017
    Michael Maitland from Kapsch TrafficCom looks at how the various forms of tolling can help authorities combat traffic congestion and air quality problems while simultaneously raising revenue.
  • EV sales stalling in the UK
    April 17, 2012
    The number of electric cars sold in the UK has fallen by over 50 per cent to just 215 in the first three months of the year despite Government incentives, according to figures from the RAC Foundation.Since 1 January, individuals and businesses have been able to claim a discount of up to £5,000 (US$8,193) on cars producing 75 g CO2/km or less under the Government’s Plug-In Car Grant scheme. A total of 680 cars have been purchased under the programme, taking the number of electric cars registered in the UK to