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Before there was CuriosityLab, the three-mile autonomous vehicle testing ground that has made Peachtree Corners a magnet for international companies running pilots of the latest mobility technologies, there was Siemens.
The German industrial giant has operated multiple factories and offices north of Atlanta since at least a decade before the city was incorporated in 2012.
Now, Siemens employs more than 2,000 people across the metro area, with 500 at the Peachtree Corners research-and-development hub that Jan. 1 was named the home of an eMobility business unit designed to help the corporate behemoth act like a nimble startup in this fast-moving sector.
That initiative paid off Thursday, when Siemens, which recorded $74.4 billion in global revenues last year, unveiled a weather-proof charging structure developed and co-patented with Canadian building-materials startup Nexii in just six months.
In a speech at a “first charge” ceremony in the Siemens parking lot, Nexii CEO Stephen Sidwell said many large corporates move at “turtle speed,” but Siemens kept up with Nexii’s “hyper-speed” pace.
“They moved every bit as fast as we did,” he said.
Mr. Sidwell added that his company’s Nexiite material, a proprietary blend of sand and other elements, is meant to replace concrete and steel, materials representing far greater “embodied” CO2 emissions from their carbon-intensive production processes.
“If concrete was a country, it would be No. 3. It’s China, the U.S. and concrete,” said Mr. Sidwell, who relishes the idea of tackling two big carbon emitters at once: transportation and buildings.
And it’s not just the canopies’ composition that cuts carbon; the above-ground structure is hollowed out to house wires and busway systems used to transfer the power to multiple chargers. That means installers only have to dig up one small spot to connect to the main power supply, instead of burying wires in disruptive trenches that have to be covered up with even more concrete.
The VersiCharge XL solution can be used at new or existing buildings, especially parking garages, office lots and other locations where large groups of EVs will be using Level 2 and Level 3 chargers. Last-mile delivery fleets and even stadiums are on the future roadmap. The structure is expandable as well, with battery storage and solar arrays as important add-ons planned for later.
“Think of this almost as the gas station of the future,” said Mr. Sidwell.
While this project came together quickly, Siemens is no newcomer to the EV space, John DeBoer, head of Siemens eMobility for North America, told Global Atlanta in an interview.
With about a century of power-generation innovation under its belt, Siemens started on EVs in 2010, when the U.S. was “the land of 10,000 pilots” and highly dependent on tax incentives.
Now, charging technology is on a faster track to becoming more open and standardized — a posture Siemens has long lobbied for in order to keep consumers from being tied to “captive assets.”
“What was really exciting for us is that we never stopped, and it actually was right here,” Mr. DeBoer said of Peachtree Corners. “All the way from 2010 through 2020, we made three different generations of charging. It was like we were just sitting there, waiting and waiting, which sometimes frustrating, but we were ready to go.”
Electric vehicles, however, finally seem poised to have their moment. EV sales more than doubled to 9.1 percent of the global car market in 2020.
“Maybe it’s the optimist in me, but it looks like here is that that the industry really is starting to reach that next pace and scale,” Mr. DeBoer said.
That optimism is in part based on the infrastructure law Congress passed last August, which allocates $7.5 billion to build out a nationwide charging network. Under that plan, Georgia will get $20 million this year and $135 million over the next five years, said Rep. Carolyn Bordeaux, a Democrat from Gwinnett who touted her role in pushing for the bipartisan spending plan.
The congresswoman talked up the need for the government to partner with private-sector innovators whose technology knowhow will be needed to scale up electrification quickly enough to meet aggressive 2030 climate goals and improve equitable access in the EV space.
“I like to say that Georgia can do well by doing good,” Ms. Bordeaux said, noting that creating jobs and addressing climate change could go hand in hand.
Siemens is one of the few companies with capabilities across this whole “puzzle,” from chargers plugged into vehicles to the inevitable strain on the entire grid that will eventually come with thousands plugging in their cars at once. Its vast product portfolio includes low-voltage distribution, utility-scale systems, monitoring software and even energy storage — a key to widespread deployment of solar and wind energy — through Fluence, a company Siemens helped launch whose IPO just rasied nearly $1 billion in proceeds, said Ruth Gratzke, president of Siemens Smart Infrastructure U.S. and CEO of Siemens Industry Inc.
“All these parts and pieces that we’ve been working on for a very long time, they’re now becoming a whole, and that is the exciting piece,” Ms. Gratzke told Global Atlanta.
Such reliability will be vital if Georgia is to make good on its play to become a global leader in the EV value chain, Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols said in his remarks, praising Germany as a key partner in providing game-changing technology for the state.
“We need more German engineering — not less,” he said. The state’s progress thus far includes a $2.6 billion SK Battery plant and its suppliers, as well as the pledged $5 billion Rivian electric pickup truck factory.
The fact that Rivian is set to build trucks is going to be key to inspiring Georgians — especially Republicans like himself — to join the EV revolution, Mr. Echols said.
“If there’s one things Republicans love, it’s a truck — a truck that can outrun a Corvette, that has true four-wheel drive, will go through three feet of water, and it can charge your house like a generator — that’s what I’m talking about,” he said to approving laughter from the crowd.
CuriosityLab is also playing a role in bringing new technologies to fruition. The initiative by the City of Peachtree Corners has brought in innovators from places like Germany, Israel and beyond to test their products and capture data from a living smart city.
Peachtree Corners Mayor Mike Mason elicited some groans from the crowd when he mentioned working for a Siemens competitor in the past. But he quickly recovered when noting that he now has a Siemens charger for his Nissan Leaf in his garage and pointed out the fact that the company had been in Peachtree Corners longer than he had.
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