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

  • Data collection becoming a crowded market
    October 26, 2017
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.
  • Transportation management market set to grow 12.3 per cent by 2019
    February 13, 2014
    MarketsandMarkets recently conducted a study on the Transportation Management Market [Transportation Management Systems, Fleet Management Solutions, Freight Audit & Payment, Route Planning & Optimisation, Managed Services, Business Services] - Global Advancements Market Forecasts and Analysis (2014 - 2019), which analysed and studied the major market drivers, restraints, and opportunities in North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific (including Japan), and Latin America. The study report
  • Now is the time for V2X in tolling
    July 9, 2025
    FTE, Indra, Audi & Qualcomm Technologies demonstrate C-V2X tolling in Florida
  • Arup’s vision of urban mobility in 2050
    May 6, 2015
    Arup’s vision of the Future of Highways considers a wide range of factors that will impact on mobility towards the middle of the century. In its consideration of the Future of Highways through to 2050, international consultants Arup has taken a broad and pragmatic view of where society is heading and the effects that will have on the transport requirements. In terms of major drivers it not only cites