Ionity Europe-wide Electric Car Fast Charge Network
BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford and the Volkswagen Group (including Audi and Porsche) are building Ionity, a Europe-wide electric car fast-charging network.
Following an MOU last year, a consortium of car makers – BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford and the Volkswagen Group (including Audi and Porsche) – are building a Europe-wide network of fast-charging stations for electric cars which will allow EV drivers to travel, and charge quickly, right across Europe.
The network has already been started with 20 fast-charge stations running from Germany to Norway – spaced around every 75 miles – and plans for a further 30 this year.
In 2018 a further 50 stations will be added, and the plan is to have 400 by 2020 – including in the UK – enabling cars using the Combined Charging System (CCS) to access charge rates of up to 350kW, perfect for existing BMW and VW EVs, and just what the Porsche Mission E will need when it arrives.
Despite the operation being run by the German car makers (and Ford) the charging stations will be open to all makes of car which use the CCS standard, and at prices which will be comparable to current pay-per-use EV charging points.
Michael Hajesch, CEO of Ionity, said:
The first pan-European HPC network plays an essential role in establishing a market for electric vehicles. IONITY will deliver our common goal of providing customers with fast charging and digital payment capability, to facilitate long-distance travel.
It is also likely to see the CCS standard adopted by more car makers – like PSA and Nissan – although perhaps not Tesla.
arthur4563 says
I fully expect al of the Asian automakers, who often use CHAdeMO charging protocol,
to switch to CCS, making it the universal DC fast charge protocol, except for Tesla, perhaps, although if Tesla continues to network their Superchargers, they will be totally outnumbered by the 130 plud EVs that will be using CCS. There is no valid reason fro Tesla tocontinue e,mploying their supercharger protocol. It has already been eclipsed by 350KW CCS (Tesla is 120KW, less than half as fast as CCS) , which can also go to 500KW in the future.