US Startup Envisions Trouble-Free EV Charging At Fuel Stations

Assist CleanTechnica’s work by way of a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

The cussed persistence of partisan politics apart, the automobile electrification motion faces important structural obstacles. Chief amongst them are the excessive prices of putting in fast-charging stations, and an growing old, creaky, bottleneck-y grid that may’t assist fast-charging know-how in lots of areas. To not fear. The EV charging station atmosphere is getting a fast pick-me-up within the type of AI-assisted charging-plus-storage programs, as capably illustrated by the California startup ElectricFish.

EV Charging In The USA: The place Have All The EVs Gone?

The launch of recent EV charging know-how into the US market comes at a fraught time for decarbonization advocates. As anticipated, home EV gross sales crashed within the months following the untimely loss of life of the federal EV tax credit score on September 30 of 2025, and the outlook for 2026 doesn’t look rosy, both.

Nonetheless, EV gross sales didn’t completely evaporate, and a few automakers are nonetheless planning to elbow new EVs into the hole left by business chief Tesla’s ongoing nosedive, together with Toyota and Ford together with newcomer Telo Vehicles and the Jeff Bezos-backed startup Slate Auto. Collectively, they lend assist to the concept investing within the the nation’s EV charging community continues to be a worthwhile proposition.

As well as, whereas lack of the tax credit score might discourage present EV homeowners from shopping for one other EV, the very fact is that the horses have already run out of the barn. Greater than 4 million EVs are presently on the highway within the US, and that’s no small potatoes. Likelihood is that some — if not most — of these drivers will stick to an EV after they want one other automotive, additional supporting investments in new charging stations. Gross sales of plug-in hybrids, together with range-extended choices like these provided by the Scout Motors department of Volkswagen, may even assist the demand for extra handy, extra accessible charging stations.

The ElectricFish Resolution: Go For The Fuel Stations

Into this situation jumps ElectricFish with a cheap EV charging station resolution that works round grid bottlenecks, with a selected concentrate on enabling conventional fuel stations to include EV charging into their enterprise mannequin.

“Fuel stations are constructed for brief dwell occasions and excessive turnover. We designed our new service to behave like a pump, not a parking house,” emphasizes ElectricFish CEO and co-founder Anurag Kamal.

ElectricFish first floated throughout the CleanTechnica radar in March of 2025 with the official launch of its new “350Squared” charging station, for which it claimed a financial savings of 90% of the price of grid upgrades wanted for standard fast-charging stations, achieved by eliminating new trenches and different infrastructure bills. The containerized system can be picked up and moved with a minimal of problems, if wanted.

“ElectricFish’s chief contribution is ‘350Squared,’ a modular, plug-and-play charging station that may deploy present 200-amp electrical infrastructure to tug double responsibility as a group microgrid and vitality storage facility, offering backup energy in case of emergency,” CleanTechnica noticed. The ultra-fast charging system contains 400 kilowatt-hours of storage, enabling it to recharge itself slowly whereas delivering a fast cost to EV drivers in a rush.

Within the newest information from ElectricFish, the corporate unveiled its new “400Squared” charging station resolution on the Client Electronics Present (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this week, offering CleanTechnica with further particulars by e mail (the data can be accessible right here).

Comfort is entrance and middle in ElectricFish’s enterprise mannequin. The thought is to offer EV drivers with a fast, 8–10 minute top-off at any close by fuel station, pumping as much as 180 miles of vary into their batteries whereas a revenue-sharing mannequin relieves property homeowners from upfront set up prices.

“Standard quick charger installations require utility upgrades that may run north of $150,000 per port and take 12–18+ months to finish,” ElectricFish notes.

“The grid can’t maintain tempo with EV adoption — and legacy DC quick charging makes the issue worse,” the corporate provides. “Every new set up provides large peak demand to already strained infrastructure, deepening the very constraint holding EV infrastructure again. The tougher the business pushes, the extra the grid pushes again.”

With the storage factor and vitality administration software program, ElectricFish states that it could actually present 400-kilowatt charging from a 30-kilowatt grid connection, and even lower than 30 kilowatts in some circumstances. The set up may be accomplished in 4–6 weeks, a pointy distinction with the 12–18 months typical of standard fast-charging stations.

“We don’t promote EV chargers or batteries; we promote time and uptime. We’ve decoupled charging velocity from grid limits by actively managing when vitality flows in or out, so quick charging strengthens the grid as a substitute of destabilizing it,” explains ElectricFish CTO and co-founder Nelio Batista.

Extra EV Charging Stations For Extra EVs

The ElectricFish resolution has already earned a giant thumbs-up from Hyundai, which put the system by way of its paces at its California Proving Floor within the warmth of the summer time in 2025. “We see this as a option to unlock quick charging at websites that the grid alone can’t assist right now,” reported Hyundai Senior Engineer Dean Vivo Amore.

Toyota can be onboard. ElectricFish additionally notes that the Toyota Mobility Basis’s Sustainable Cities Problem was instrumental in its most up-to-date industrial deployment, situated on the Jap Market meals and warehouse hub in Detroit.

ElectricFish is only one of amongst quite a few new charging-plus-storage innovators to anticipate that right now’s dismal atmosphere for EV gross sales is a passing blip alongside the way in which to a decarbonized future.

One other up-and-comer to observe is the Seattle agency ElectricEra, which is pitching its fast-charging know-how to the comfort retailer market. The corporate unveiled its new, trademarked “RetailEdge” charging station on the Nationwide Affiliation of Comfort Shops in October. The corporate is focusing consideration on smooth styling, by means of encouraging property homeowners to place their EV chargers entrance and middle quite than hiding them behind the lot, whereas additionally enabling retailers to squeeze extra worth from the addition of recent charging stations.

“RetailEdge Experiences unlocks the complete worth of the EV cost kiosk’s premium touchscreen by permitting retailers to configure the display screen to ship loyalty program signups, membership validation, retail media campaigns — and even conduct retail transactions by linking with point-of-sale programs,” ElectricEra defined.

With out the necessity for important new electrical energy infrastructure, ElectricEra experiences a 54-day set up timeline for its 400-kilowatt charging stations. To additional grease the EV gross sales wheels, the corporate can be pitching its “HaloAI” assistant, which may information drivers by way of the EV charging course of.

Photograph credit score (cropped): “New analysis, which incorporates the primary draft meeting of the whole genome of an electrical fish, the South American electrical eel, identifies the genetic components the animals used to create an organ that may ship a jolt a number of occasions extra highly effective than normal family present,” courtesy of Nationwide Aquarium through the College of Wisconsin-Madison.