Puebla has been the base of Mexico's car industry for decades. Volkswagen has operated a plant there since the 1960s; Audi opened one nearby in 2016. The streets around San Lorenzo Almecatla, where QiOn and XC Power opened their Supercool Mobility Center station in June 2023, sit close to some of the largest vehicle manufacturing facilities in Latin America. Courthouse News reporter Cody Copeland visited the station in July of that year and found it already serving local drivers who had recently switched to electric vehicles.
The location is not coincidental. As the OEMs anchored in Puebla shift their production lines toward electric vehicles, the region needs charging infrastructure that can keep pace with that transition. A public megawatt station capable of fast turnaround times — the kind measured in minutes, not hours — sends a clear signal to the industry that ground-level infrastructure in Mexico is starting to match the direction the vehicle sector is heading.
For people who live and work in the area, the change is already tangible. Local driver Mauricio Hernández told Courthouse News he switched to electric earlier that year partly because fuel costs had become unpredictable. He stops at the station regularly. Station manager Marcelo Copantitla was processing charges from a smartphone when Copeland visited, serving a mix of passenger cars and commercial vehicles from the surrounding industrial zone. That mix — private drivers and fleet operators together, in the middle of Mexico's automotive heartland — is what makes the Puebla station worth paying attention to.
Originally reported by Courthouse News Service. Read the full article →
