Ample and Repsol expand EV battery swapping in Madrid
The first site in Montecarmelo is operational, with additional locations on Avenida de Andalucía and in the Barajas area scheduled to open soon. The expansion builds on Ample’s existing station on Manuel Luna Street and marks the first integration of battery swapping into conventional fuel station sites in Spain.
After launching in Tokyo, Japan, earlier this year, Ample announced that it was coming to open its first European site in Madrid in June. It even received funding from the Spanish government.
The partnership is part of Repsol’s wider mobility strategy and its target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Repsol Corporate Venturing, the company’s investment arm, is already an investor in Ample.
Another important partner for Ample an Repsol in Madrid is the automotive group Stellantis. Its car-sharing service Free2Move is deploying Fiat 500e vehicles in the city, which have been specially converted to use Ample’s battery exchange system. The car-sharing fleet will use Ample’s battery exchange stations to maintain high availability and uptime.
“In a few weeks, there will be 100 Fiat 500s driving around Madrid and recharging at the Montecarmelo, Avenida Andalucía, and Barajas stations,” Oliver Fernández, Director of Electric Mobility at Repsol stated on LinkedIn.
The battery swapping system offers full vehicle recharging in five minutes. The technology is modular and vehicle-agnostic, designed to replace depleted battery packs with fully charged ones without driver intervention. Ample emphasises that the system is particularly well-suited for high-utilisation fleet applications in densely populated urban areas and that it can be installed in three days.
The latest design of Ample’s battery swapping station was unveiled in 2023. It says that it can swap out batteries in just five minutes. Moreover, the design differs from Nio’s stations, for example. In case of the latter, EVs have to back in. With the Ample station, electric vehicles can drive in from one side and out the other, making it more suitable for commercial vehicles.
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