Skip to main content

L.A. Car Charging Firm Being Investigated by FBI Acquired

Support Provided By
Screen shot 2013-05-03 at 3.08.09 PM-thumb-600x310-50381
Car charging stations in a Chicago drugstore parking lot | Photo: Kevin Zolkiewicz/Flickr/Creative Commons License

 

A Los Angeles-based company that builds charging stations for electric cars has been sold, making its new owner the largest electric car charging station network in the U.S. In a deal reached last week after months of negotiation, Car Charging Group Inc. bought the L.A.-based startup 350Green for about $5.2 million.

Car Charging Group, which has already acquired the electric vehicles charging companies Beam Charging and EVPass in 2013, now claims the mantle of largest publicly accessible electric vehicle charging network in the U.S., with thousands of stations across the country.

350Green started out with high hopes in Los Angeles, as the first fledgling company accepted into the L.A. Cleantech Incubator (LACI) program in 2011. LACI also helped negotiate the terms of the company's acquisition by Car Charging Group.

The buyout comes less than a month after the Chicago Tribune reported that the FBI is looking into reports that 350Green had underpaid -- or failed to pay -- vendors in the Chicago area involved with the firm's contract to set up a network of charging stations in the Chicagoland area. According to Tribune reporter Julie Wernau, 350Green was supposed to build hundreds of charging stations in Chicago and its suburbs by 2011, but the project was never finished. 350Green backed out of similar arrangements in 19 other cities when the Chicago project faltered.

Though 350Green presented copies of checks it had cut to contractors and vendors to the city of Chicago for reimbursement from state and federal grant funds, some of those contractors and vendors told the Tribune that they'd never received those checks, or that the amounts paid were less than 350Green owed them. The potential for irregularities in federal grant fund handling is likely what attracted the attention of the FBI, though the law enforcement agency isn't saying.

350Green president Tim Mason told the Tribune's Wernau that the discrepancies were due to clerical errors. "Those people involved there who were doing the invoicing and billing are not with the company anymore," he said.

As Eric Loveday reported Friday on the electric car trade website Inside EVs, 350Green's new owner Car Charging Group Inc. appeared in court in Chicago this week with an agreement between the two firms that Car Charging could take over the mothballed Chicago charger installation project. There was a complication, though: another firm, JNS Holdings, was there with a similar agreement it says it signed with 350Green.

The effect of the acquisition on that conflict remains to be seen. Loveday's assessment in his piece of 350Green's future -- "We'd assume 350Green is basically defunct at this point," he writes -- seems to have been borne out, in a way, with the company's assets folded into those of Car Charging Group Inc., now the industry leader.

Car Charging Group's public statements on the acquisition seem to offer quiet acknowledgement of 350Green's troubles. "After nearly a year of working diligently to acquire 350Green, we are pleased to announce that the acquisition is finally complete," Michael D. Farkas, CEO of CarCharging, said in a press release. "We are confident that this is a step forward in strengthening the EV charging industry, and we will work as quickly as possible to consolidate operations and ensure that all of 350Green's stations are working properly."

Support Provided By
Read More
Gray industrial towers and stacks rise up from behind the pitched roofs of warehouse buildings against a gray-blue sky, with a row of yellow-gold barrels with black lids lined up in the foreground to the right of a portable toilet.

California Isn't on Track To Meet Its Climate Change Mandates. It's Not Even Close.

According to the annual California Green Innovation Index released by Next 10 last week, California is off track from meeting its climate goals for the year 2030, as well as reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
A row of cows stands in individual cages along a line of light-colored enclosures, placed along a dirt path under a blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds.

A Battle Is Underway Over California’s Lucrative Dairy Biogas Market

California is considering changes to a program that has incentivized dairy biogas, to transform methane emissions into a source of natural gas. Neighbors are pushing for an end to the subsidies because of its impact on air quality and possible water pollution.
A Black woman with long, black brains wears a black Chicago Bulls windbreaker jacket with red and white stripes as she stands at the top of a short staircase in a housing complex and rests her left hand on the metal railing. She smiles slightly while looking directly at the camera.

Los Angeles County Is Testing AI's Ability To Prevent Homelessness

In order to prevent people from becoming homeless before it happens, Los Angeles County officials are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to predict who in the county is most likely to lose their housing. They would then step in to help those people with their rent, utility bills, car payments and more so they don't become unhoused.