Walgreens, a drugstore chain in the USA, has opened its first electric vehicle (EV) charging station at its International Drive and Sand Lake Road facility in Orlando.
The drugstore chain has associated with Car Charging Group, a company that owns and supplies EV charging stations, to provide convenient and easy to reach charging facilities at eight of its sites in the area before October end. All the charging stations will deploy two level 2 chargers that will suit any EV manufactured in North America. The company is providing a number of charging stations at its retail facilities, thus assisting Orlando to build its EV charging infrastructure.
Car Charging Group will install EV charging stations at all the Walgreens stores in Orlando, and continue to provide management and maintenance services. It will manage the EV charging operations by using a cloud-based software connected to its network operations. The software will offer the clients the options to make payments flexibly, to make advanced reservations for the charging facility and will assist the company to track cost and revenues, energy use of clients and their usage patterns. The EV service installations of the company are linked to the network with 24/7 support extended to the drivers with mobile phone access to find the nearest charging location, navigation to the facility and charging status in real-time.
Earlier in July, Walgreens had announced its plans to have EV charging facilities at around 800 locations all over the country by the year end.