The whole world was skeptical about electric vehicles in the beginning but the trend has shifted and everyone has embraced it with enthusiasm. Many countries are planning to switch entirely to electric in the coming years. With this change in attitude towards electric vehicles, companies are doing whatever they can to facilitate the EV owners. The latest project announced is the partnership of international energy and e-mobility company E.ON and Denmark e-mobility provider CLEVER to create charging stations from Norway all the way to Italy.
This is what a supercharging station looks like:
Over the next three years, their network will provide 180 fast charging stations across 7 countries between Norway and Italy. Each station has a capacity of 150 kW, putting it almost on par with Tesla’s 145 kW stations, but behind IONITY’s 350 kW capacity. Out of these 180 charging stations, 160 of them are in partnership with CLEVER while the other 20 are a part of a deal with the Norwegian service station chain YX.
If everything goes according to plan, E.ON and CLEVER have a further plan to expand the number to 400 charging stations all across Europe. “Together with strong partners we are taking a joint step towards establishing a comprehensive ultra-fast charging infrastructure in Europe,” said Frank Meyer, Head of Innovation and B2C at E.ON, in a statement. “We see a reliable ultra-fast charging network in combination with our home and destination solutions as main prerequisites for a mass market adoption of electric mobility.”
The initiative has already received $12 million in funding from the European Commission making it only 1 of 4 projects being chosen to be explored. The initial charging stations will be located in Germany and Denmark. Each station will have 2-4 chargers and the chargers will have the capability to fully charge 400 km range battery in 20-30 minutes. This is a rough estimate according to E.ON and the actual time will depend on the car and battery capacity.
You can see how Tesla supercharger compares with others in the video below:
“We believe that the combination of being able to cater for almost any car brand, securing the right locations, and offering customers well thought through solutions will be part of convincing people that EVs are a real alternative to conventional cars,” said CLEVER CEO Casper Kirketerp-Møller.
We will have to wait and see how the latest initiative to help out electric vehicles owners and to convince others to shift to electric pans out.
