Europe to get electric vehicle charging station network

Source: N1 Monday, 21.05.2018. 10:27
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In Europe, some of the biggest automakers are out to encourage electric-vehicle sales by building a highway network of fast charging stations. The idea is to let drivers plug in, charge in minutes instead of hours, and speed off on their way — from Norway to southern Italy and Portugal to Poland.

Much is at stake for the automakers, which include Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler and Ford. Their joint venture, Munich-based Ionity, is pushing to roll out its network in time to service the next generation of battery-only cars coming on the market starting next year. They're aiming to win back some of the market share for electric luxury car sales lost to Tesla, which has its own, proprietary fast-charging network.

The idea is to break electric cars out of the early adopter niche, in which they are charged slowly overnight at home and used for short commutes.

Ionity opened its first station April 17 at a rest stop off the A61 highway near the small town of Niederzissen. The six high-speed chargers are operating in "welcome mode," meaning they're free until May 31. After that, Ionity plans to charge for the power, which it seeks to obtain from renewable sources. Ionity has agreements for some 300 sites, working with fueling station and rest stop landlords. The average distance between stations will be 120 kilometers.

Tesla has shown how charging infrastructure can drive vehicle sales. It has 1,229 stations with 9,623 fast chargers in Europe alone. But it has its own proprietary plug. Ionity is using the CCS plug backed by the European Union as a common standard for all.

Ionity is counting on the large 350-kilowatt capacity of its publicly available chargers — almost three times the 120 kilowatts per vehicle of Tesla's Superchargers. No car currently on the market can make full use of 350 kilowatt charging capacity. But they're coming: in 2019 Porsche plans to introduce the Mission E. Porsche says that the sleek, low-slung sports car will take 15 minutes to charge for 400 kilometers more driving, N1 reports.

Serbia will not be part of the network, but, as the PE Roads of Serbia recently announced for our portal, the plan is to install another 10 chargers along the main arteries in the country. At the moment, Serbia has 143 registered electric vehicles.
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