Sarkar said he is pursuing federal grant money and commitments from charging manufacturers and automakers to scale the project, which could break ground as soon as the fall.
The charging hub seeks to provide automakers and charging manufacturers solutions to the issue of interoperability between different vehicles and charging systems. Michigan has relatively few varieties of chargers in operation and no single location where various types can be tested, Sarkar said.
Washington, D.C., has been the closest place for such testing, he said. At one point, the trip from Detroit to Washington served a dual purpose for automakers looking to also validate batteries, but it is not an efficient way to zero in on the interaction of car and charger.
“There is no place in Michigan you can go to have 30 different chargers of different makes and models, so where do you go?” Sarkar told Crain’s Detroit Business on Wednesday after a presentation at the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Mich. Crain’s is an affiliate of Automotive News.
The answer, Sarkar would hope, is the American Center for Mobility. The EV testbed is its latest attempt to provide more offerings than just testing of autonomous vehicles. The incoming hydrogen hub is another example.
AVs may be the future, but it remains a mystery how far out that future might be. As automaker spending on AVs took a backseat amid the EV boom, Sarkar sought to reposition the center to solve industry problems in the present.
“This is a starting point to deal with a tangible industry problem,” he said. “My goal is that we would continue to invest in that EV testbed.”
