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

  • The challenging European road to carbon neutrality and the need for distance-based charging
    November 1, 2023
    Fuel taxes are falling and EVs have the potential to create social equity issues. The answer may lie in expanding the use of technology which has successfully been used for two decades with trucks
    Read More
  • Running on empty
    May 2, 2018
    Drivers are an increasingly rare species on Europe’s commuter metros as unattended train operation is embraced. David Crawford takes a low-speed tour of the continent’s capitals to see what’s happening. Unattended train operation (UTO) is fast becoming the norm for Europe’s metros, on existing as well as new lines. November 2017 statistics published by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) show the continent as having 28% of the global total of route km on lines operating at the ultimate
    Read More
  • London needs just one road user charge, says report
    July 8, 2019
    London’s patchwork of road charging schemes should be replaced by a single, distance-based user charge, according to new research. Apart from anything else, it would be much fairer… The UK capital’s multiple road charging schemes require a radical overhaul, according to a new report by the Centre for London thinktank. The suggested solution is to replace existing levies on drivers with a single, distance-based user charge which would more fairly reflect how much, and at what time, people are using London
    Read More
  • Costing transit is complicated case
    August 19, 2015
    David Crawford welcomes fresh thinking from Canada. Public transit improvements can bring society “significantly more value” than conventional transport models normally indicate, argues Canadian researcher Todd Litman. “Traditional evaluation practices originally developed to assess roadway improvements, and focus primarily on vehicle travel speeds and operating costs. “They do not generally quantify or monetise basic mobility benefits, vehicle ownership and parking cost savings, or efficient land developme
    Read More

Highlighted Content