Electrify America is a subsidiary created by the Volkswagen Group as its penance for the so-called dieselgate scandal when the German automaker was caught cheating emissions testing using special software. That was back in 2016. At VW's press conference on July 13 we found out that the entity will now double the amount of its electric vehicle charging stations in the US and Canada by the end of 2025.

The original plan was to have about 800 public chargers operational, equating to about 3,500 individual chargers by 2021. Now the plan is to have 1,800, about 10,000 chargers by the middle of the decade. Currently, Electrify America has just 635 stations installed in the US. Of those new 1,800, only 100 will go to Canada.

VW is court-ordered to improve the state of public charging, but it's good for business too. There are many reports of dead chargers and blocked charging stations that aren't updated on any of the apps. These will be fast chargers, the ones we need to get close to parity with filling up a gas tank.

The number of EVs on the road, like VW's own ID.4, is growing every day, and that is what's pushing the increase in investment, according to EA President Giovanni Palazzo.

"We have decided to double our current charging infrastructure in North America over the next four years to help meet the need for the rapid growth expected of electric vehicles by virtually all the auto manufacturers, and to help make EV adoption more accessible and attractive than ever. We are making this commitment to support the plans by major automakers and the US and Canadian governments to help the transformation to an electric mobility transportation system."

Its original plan was to invest more than $2 billion in clean energy infrastructure. Now the plan is to up that amount considerably. That plan kicked off in 2017 when there was a smaller handful of EVs on the market.

It will also hit a handful of new states including Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming and Vermont, "bringing Electrify America's network to 49 US states and the District of Columbia."

In 2020, almost two million EVs were registered in the US, more than three times as many in 2016. US EV growth is going slower than most other developed countries, but we're moving in the right direction. Adding more chargers will only help the adoption.