Ionity and MSA Extra to deliver eight new 350kW electric car charging stations

Ionity has teamed up with Extra MSA Group to deliver 350kW electric car charging at eight Extra MSA sites on UK motorways.

Ionity – a project headed by Daimler, Ford, BMW and Volkswagen – is busy delivering 350kW charging facilities for electric cars in the UK, aiming to have 40 sites in place by 2020, strategically located, to make rapid charging of EVs a much simpler event than it currently is.

So far, Ionity has rolled out a 350kW charging stations in Maidstone and Milton Keynes, and is busy building another at Gretna Green, but a new tie-up with MSA’s ‘Extra’ brand – which operates filling stations on UK motorways – will see another eight rapid charging sites opening fairly quickly.

The first ‘Extra’ High Power Charging station (HPC) will be located at Extra’s new outlet at J45 on the M1 at Leeds, with six HPCs on offer and ready to roll by the end of this year. Further locations will be Cobham, Cambridge, Beaconsfield, Cullompton, Blackburn, Baldock and Peterborough.

But it’s not just Ionity rolling out HPCs in the UK, with Gridserve announcing yesterday that its first electric Forecourt will be in Braintree with plans for 100 Electric Forecourts in total.

It feels like EVs have now tipped over in to mainstream properly with a proper roll-out of EV charging stations across the UK which will mean properly sensible charging times for more recent EVs.

The only real roadblock is a growing sense that buying an EV now may put you in to battery technology which will soon be usurped with the arrival of solid state batteries for electric cars. Which could put a spoke in most car maker’s EV plans, especially Tesla.