Electric vehicle charging company Wallbox has selected Arlington for its first U.S. manufacturing plant, which will produce hundreds of thousands of car chargers a year by the end of the decade.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company chose Arlington for its central location in the country as well as highway access to the major highway systems in North Texas, according to a release.
The 130,000-square-foot Texas factory will be the company’s fourth facility and its first in North America. A spokesperson for Wallbox declined to provide the exact location of the factory.
Wallbox has a presence in 68 countries, including two factories in Europe and one in China. It intends to leverage the new Arlington facility to expand across the North American market.
The new facility is expected to create 250 jobs in the area by 2030, at which point Wallbox anticipates producing 500,000 chargers annually. It’s beginning work on the Arlington facility in October and expects to start producing chargers by June 2022.
Wallbox sees the U.S. electric vehicle market reaching an inflection point and said it intends to capitalize on an increase in demand for charging stations. The company sees opportunity in the American market citing the Biden administration’s goal of getting U.S. car sales to be 50% electric vehicles by 2030.
“This new factory will be an instrumental step in our expansion in the North American market, enabling us not only to meet the growing demand but also to accelerate the launch of new products and enter the business and public EV charging segments as we bring our production stateside,” Wallbox co-founder and CEO Enric Asunción said in a statement.
There are currently 364 electric vehicle charging stations in Dallas from companies including Tesla, Blink and ChargePoint, according to locating service ChargeHub. The company ranks Los Angeles, San Fransisco and Portland as the most EV-friendly cities based on availability of charging stations. Los Angeles boasts more than 2,400 charging stations today.
Wallbox recently announced its plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange through a SPAC merger with Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp. II valuing the company at $1.5 billion.
The company offers an at-home charging system for electric vehicle owners called Pulsar Plus and also recently struck a partnership with SunPower to offer solar-powered vehicle charging stations.
Wallbox’s Pulsar Plus became an Amazon best-seller this year, driving significant sales growth for the company. In the first half of 2021, Wallbox saw a 300% increase in revenue over the same period in 2020. The company has sold more than 100,000 charging units since its founding in 2015.
Establishing an infrastructure that can supply power to future fleets of electric vehicles on U.S. roads could prove to be a lucrative business for companies like Wallbox. Toyota, which has its North American headquarters in Plano, has said it’s tapering its goals for electrification until more charging infrastructure is available.
