Hyundai Ioniq 9 at an Ionna stationIt now has over 180 charging sites in the U.S. More are coming online every week.It's been a big year for Ionna. In its third year of operation, the automaker-backed charging company has really picked up the pace, rapidly bringing new stations online as it races to build a nationwide network that rivals those from Tesla, EVgo, and Electrify America. Ionna now has more 180 stations up and running, more than double its footprint at the start of 2026, it announced on Wednesday. And it's not slowing down."We started the year at 80 sites, hit the 100th site right on our second-year anniversary as a company, and now we're nine months into the year and we've over doubled in size," Ionna CEO Seth Cutler told me in an interview. But the company isn't aiming for sheer size."We made a pretty big commitment for quality as scale, and we're just driving as fast as possible to deliver on that," he added. Ionna leapt to the top of the leaderboard in JD Power's 2026 U.S. Electric Vehicle Experience Public Charging Study, which covered customer satisfaction with charging networks. And it's consistently undercutting other brands on price, as I wrote in August.Despite its rapid expansion, Ionna is not America's fastest-growing charging network. Tesla still installed more chargers in the second quarter, with Walmart coming in second place, according to Paren. That's hardly a bad thing; America finally has a flourishing fast charging industry with a lot of quickly expanding brands.Ionna is trying to anchor itself in the center of this new era of fast charging. That's why it's offering aggressive promotions, like ultra-discounted fuel on holiday weekends, incentivized pricing at new locations, and 10% discounts on charging for EVs from BMW, General Motors, Hyundai, and Mercedes-Benz. (All of those companies came together to found Ionna. Don't be surprised if the other Ionna-backing brands brands—Toyota, Stellantis, Honda, and Kia—get their own discounts.)The company plans to blanket the U.S. and Canada with 30,000 plugs by 2030, potentially putting it in the same league as Tesla, which has 40,000 ports there and is by far North America's biggest charging player. To make that happen, Ionna is working with gas station and convenience brands like Sheetz, Wawa, and Circle K. This year, it struck a deal to take over Circle K's charging infrastructure, overhaul existing sites, and set up new "Rechargeries" at its stores. Today, the company noted that there are already over 40 Circle K partner sites online, a feat considering that the deal was only announced this past April."We're building scale faster than I think most have ever built a network before across the U.S., maybe with the exception of Tesla. And I think the level of quality for such a new network is extremely high," Cutler said, noting the promising showing in the J.D. Power study.But expanding so quickly creates its own challenge: keeping the quality up as the network rapidly grows from hundreds to thousands of locations. The company's early success has set the bar high. And customers will continue to expect a good experience."What keeps me nervous, what keeps me up at night honestly, is we've got to maintain that, right? Now there's a target on our back" Cutler said. "We did this, and there's nowhere to go but up. There's no excuse."Contact the author: [email protected]