(Elbil24): The European car fleet will be electrified within a few years and most EU countries and almost all major car manufacturers have launched ambitious plans in the last year on how the transition will take place.
The keywords are the rapid phasing out of cars with internal combustion engines and the introduction of a number of new electric models.
These countries have the fewest electric car chargers
Growing pains
However, electrification is already experiencing some growth issues and a lot of it is that charging options aren’t increasing as rapidly as the growth of electric car sales.
In Norway we are relatively ahead on this point, especially in the south of Norway, and also a large part of the population has good possibilities to charge at home. This is definitely not the case in most other European countries, which authorities, developers and charging infrastructure providers are realizing.
It should multiply by 2025
Ionity is considered one of the major European players in on-road charging and is currently, together with Tesla, the only one specializing exclusively in high-power lightning chargers (Ionity: up to 350kW / 800V).
The company is owned by, among others, BMW, Ford, Hyundai/Kia, Mercedes-Benz and the Volkswagen Group and is represented with charging stations in 24 countries.
Last fall, they brought the American BlackRock on a large-scale expansion of the charging network. The goal was to more than quadruple the number of charging points in Europe by 2025, from 1,500 to around 7,000. The investment is expected to cost around NOK 7 billion.
At the time of writing, the company has approximately 1,900 charging points.
The new charging points will not only be connected to major highways, but also close to city centers and on busy main roads, the company said in a statement.
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Improving everyone in Norway
.- We are now investing heavily to develop the charging infrastructure across Europe, including Norway. Furthermore, investments are being made in new technologies and more services will be implemented at the stations to further simplify and improve the charging experience, says the company’s Nordic manager, Jan Haugen Ihle.
– Currently, five stations are under construction in our long country, while we are completing the upgrade of all our Norwegian stations with more charging points, he says.
It should be more comfortable
In addition to expanding the number of charging points, Ionity also aims to make the experience itself more comfortable and better than today. What it means in practice is not yet known, but many believe that the experience at the charging stations It should be more like what you get when you fill up on diesel or petrol (you can stay under one roof, have the opportunity to buy food and drink, etc.).
Ionity’s goal is that there should be no more than 150-200 kilometers between each charging station. Today there are 22 Ionity charging stations in Norway, each with up to 12 charging points, but none north of Trondheim.
However, one of the new five under construction will be in Namsskogan, almost on the border with Nordland.
