IONNA’s $250 Million California Bet Puts Site Hosts in the Driver’s Seat

Automaker-backed “Rechargeries” are racing into a state that already has more plugs than gas nozzles. Landlords now have to decide whether to be passengers—or partners.

Image source: IONNA.com

A new heavyweight enters California’s already-crowded charging map

California didn’t exactly need another EV charging logo on the map. In September, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state has 201,180 public and shared EV charging ports, about 68% more than the number of gasoline nozzles statewide, according to the California Energy Commission. But the newest entrant is different from most of the brands already bolted to curbs and parking lots.

IONNA—the DC fast-charging joint venture backed by BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and Toyota—has announced more than $250 million in planned investment in California EV infrastructure over the next three years. IONNA says it has already contracted more than 1,000 charging bays in California as part of this push, and over 4,000 bays across the U.S., with more than 1,100 live or under construction. Utility Dive reports that the joint venture aims to deploy up to 30,000 fast-charging bays nationwide by 2030, putting it in the same ambition class as Tesla’s Supercharger network.

For commercial real estate owners, retailers, and highway-adjacent landlords, this isn’t just another ribbon-cutting. It’s a signal that OEM money is now directly competing for the best sites—and that the business model around “who owns the charger, owns the customer” is entering a new phase.

“Rechargeries”: hubs designed around dwell time, not just kilowatts

IONNA markets its sites as “Rechargeries”—multi-bay hubs with high-power DC fast chargers, amenities, and Plug & Charge support for compatible vehicles. Across its public materials and partner coverage, a few common design cues appear:

• High-speed DCFC: IONNA’s “Genuine Charge Dispensers” are designed to deliver up to 400 kW and charge two vehicles simultaneously, up to 200 kW each.

• Connector flexibility: All sites are planned with both NACS and CCS plugs “to make charging available to as many brands, makes, and models as possible.”

• Amenity-rich locations: Early deployments are co-located with national brands like Wawa and Casey’s, making fast charging part of an existing stop rather than an isolated outlot.

If Tesla’s Superchargers proved that drivers will pay for a predictable, integrated experience, IONNA is trying to replicate—and localize—that model for eight automakers at once, with a more brand-agnostic front door. Crucially, this is OEM-backed private capital, not a network built primarily around federal NEVI highway grants. Utility Dive notes that IONNA’s California plan comes even as federal funding cycles and EV rules become more politicized, framing the build-out as a long-term customer and infrastructure play rather than a subsidy chase. For landlords, that changes the conversation: instead of waiting to see if a grant-funded project lands on their parcel, they’re now being courted by a network that brings its own balance sheet and a captive OEM customer base.

Why California, and why now?

California remains the archetypical EV market. In October, the Newsom administration announced that zero-emission vehicles represented 29.1% of new car sales in Q3 2025, the highest quarterly share on record, with more than 2.46 million ZEVs sold cumulatively in the state. On the infrastructure side, the state just crossed those 201,180 public and shared charging ports, with CEC data showing a rapid increase—over 26,000 chargers added in six months between August 2024 and February 2025 alone. In that context, IONNA’s move reads less like a speculative bet and more like a land grab in a market where three dynamics matter for building owners:

1. Utilization math gets real. In core urban submarkets and along major corridors, the question isn’t “can we get a charger?” but “will this site pull enough sessions, at the right price, to justify the stalls and capex we devote to it?”

   
   

2. Driver expectations are higher. Californians are more likely to have driven multiple EV brands and used Tesla, Electrify America, and other networks. Reliability, wayfinding and on-site amenities become differentiators, not nice-to-haves. J.D. Power’s latest public charging study still finds roughly 1 in 7 charging attempts fail, despite growing port counts—a reminder that quality hasn’t caught up with quantity.
   

3. Policy is noisy; demand is not. State-level ZEV mandates and strong consumer demand continue even as national rules and incentives are revisited in Washington, underscoring the value of long-lived, flexible infrastructure over short-term policy swings.

For CRE and campus owners, that’s a backdrop where fast-charging hubs are no longer exotic—they’re part of the competitive set.

What this means for CRE, retail and campus owners

For property decision-makers, IONNA’s California announcement is less about any single brand and more about how the balance of power is shifting between networks and sites.

A few practical implications:

• High-quality hosts will have options. If your property has traffic, good ingress/egress and either grid capacity or a path to add it, you’re no longer negotiating with a single regional CPO. OEM-backed networks like IONNA, utility-linked players, and independents all need real estate.

  
  

• Media and experience matter. IONNA isn’t alone in selling “charging as an experience.” Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging just opened its first U.S. hub at a Starbucks off I-5 in Red Bluff, California, with up to 400 kW chargers, dual NACS/CCS connectors, canopy lighting and the full Starbucks “coffee house experience.” For mall and lifestyle-center owners, that’s a direct analog to the kind of co-branded charging amenity you can deploy.
  

• Contracts will decide who wins long-term. Host agreements that lock a site into a single operator for 10–15 years, without performance guarantees or upgrade paths, could age badly in a market where plug standards, tariffs and vehicle mix are all changing. Watching how IONNA structures uptime SLAs, revenue shares, and upgrade provisions with early hosts (and how competitors respond) will be essential due diligence for landlords.

For industrial, logistics and fleet-adjacent sites, the calculus now includes power availability, truck access, and potential integration with onsite solar and storage. The central question remains the same: Do you want to be a passive landlord collecting rent, or an active partner in a site that shapes traffic, brand perception and ancillary spend?

From plugs to platforms

IONNA’s $250 million California plan won’t decide the EV charging race on its own. Tesla still leads on reliability and scale; utilities, truck-charging specialists and microgrid players are busy carving out their own corridors and depots.

What it does signal, though, is that the next wave of investment is coming from players who see charging as a core customer interface—not a side business. For owners and investors, that’s an invitation to rethink EV sites not just as compliance boxes to check, but as operating assets:

• They shape how tenants, employees and visitors experience the property.
  

• They intersect with power contracts, demand charges and, increasingly, on-site renewables and storage.
  

• When done right, they become part of a broader “operating system” for the campus instead of a handful of isolated pedestals in the back of the lot.

In a state that already has more plugs than pumps, the landlords who benefit most from IONNA’s spending spree won’t be the ones who simply say yes to the first proposal. They’ll be the ones who treat charging as part of a long-term strategy for energy, mobility and experience—and negotiate accordingly.