The ABB E-mobility division has agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Numocity, a leading digital platform for electric vehicle charging in India. ABB will increase its shareholding to a 72 per cent controlling majority with the right to become sole owner by 2026.
The Finnish retail cooperative S Group plans to triple the charging station network at its shops by the end of this year – from 50 locations at the end of 2021 to over 150 locations with a total of around 1,000 charging points by the end of 2022.
In Australia, Evie Networks has announced new public EV fast charging stations in 55 towns and communities throughout rural and regional Victoria. The 55 Tritium 50kW fast chargers are expected to be operational by mid-2023.
In the US, Ford Pro has launched six new home and depot chargers, the latter of which target commercial electric vehicle fleet operators. The different charging solutions range from the 11.5-kilowatt Ford Pro AC Charging Station to the 180-kilowatt modular DC fast charging systems.
In the UK, the English charging infrastructure provider InstaVolt now has a new owner: Zouk Capital has sold InstaVolt to the investor EQT Infrastructure. InstaVolt currently operates around 700 DC charging points with 50 kW capacity.
Natural Resources Canada has announced more funding for charging points. This will fund public charging points in Windsor-Essex County in Ontario, Alberta, and the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
In the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Transport, the energy company CEZ and the Volkswagen subsidiary Skoda Auto want to set up several thousand charging points for electric vehicles in the country by 2025.
In Ireland, Fingal County, which is part of the Dublin Region has launched a new pilot project with retrofitted lamp post EV charge points with Ubitricity and their curbside charging solutions.
In the USA, funding for electric vehicle charging stations worth a total of more than $1.7 million is being allocated to 26 local government agencies, universities and electric utilities in the state of Louisiana. These have been financed with the proceeds of the case against Volkswagen in the wake of the diesel scandal.
In the USA, Kansas City, Missouri has launched a pilot project to install public Level 2 EV charging stations on light poles. By the end of this year, the Metropolitan Energy Center (MEC) plans to have 30 to 60 chargers in place throughout the city.
In the English West-Midlands, Coventry City Council has announced plans to install 400 new vehicle charging points and a new bus charging facility by 2025.
Tesco Ireland, in partnership with ESB, has announced the rollout of dual-outlet electric vehicle chargers at 52 of its store carparks spanning 18 counties nationwide.
One year after the announcement of the “Electric City” project in Germany, which will provide a total of 1,300 charging points for the city of Rüsselsheim, Opel has set up the 350 charging points for fleet vehicles on the company campus.
As part of a national schools’ competition, the ‘Eco Innovators’ competition, students aged 7-19 are being asked to create a design for on-street electric vehicle (EV) charging points. Competition entries are now open until 18 October 2019.
Bosch is working with EnBW, an utility in Germany’s south, on a prototype for a charging process based on blockchain technology. The entire process – from the selection of the charging station to reservation and payment – is simplified and tailored to the customer’s needs.
German utility RWE has installed its 4,000th charging point in Europe. Most of RWE’s chargers are located in Germany (2,550), followed by the Netherlands (800) and Switzerland (173). Moreover, the company will deliver another 47 chargers to the supermarket chain Aldi Süd as part of the programme “Sonne tanken” (charging sun). pv-magazine.de, rwe.com (articles in German)
About 5,500 public charge points could be found in Germany at the end of 2014, BDEW (German Association of Energy and Water Industries) reports. 800 of those where only added in the second half of last year. At least one EV charging station stands in 839 cities and municipalities with Stuttgart displaying the most spots (348) followed by Berlin (247) and Hamburg (236). bdew.de (in German)
It is no small goal the Bolloré Group has set for itself. In the coming four years, it wants to more than double the number of charging points in France, installing 16,000 new ones across the country. It was already known that such a project had been presented to the French Ministry of Economy, but the name of the operator was only now made public.
“This project is a new stage for electric mobility in France,” Economy and Finance Minister Emmanuel Macron told French media, adding that “through a private initiative with public support, we are accelerating our route towards having a truly national network of electric car charging points.”
Bolloré wants to invest a total of 150 million euros over the next four years, installing the charging points successively across the country. CEO Vincent Bolloré said on French radio that the stations would never be further than 40 kilometres apart.
Thanks to legislation adopted in August, private operators are now allowed to construct charging stations on public territory and French utility EDF (Energie de France) had voiced their interest in realizing a similar project. At the end of January, the Economy and Finance Ministry will announce, whether the Bolloré project will be allowed to go ahead or not.
According to the energy transition law, which is still being debated by government, France wants to have a total of seven million charging points online by 2030. At the moment, there are only 14,000, with some 4,000 located in Paris as part of the electric carsharing scheme “Autolib.'”
Bolloré manufactures the “BlueCar,” the all-electric and sole vehicle employed in the programme in the French capital and its suburbs. It kicked off in December 2011, and now, nearly 3,000 of the small EVs are on the road there. The scheme was expanded to Lyon-Villeurbanne and Bordeaux in France at the end of last year and to Indianapolis in the U.S. in May 2014. lemonde.fr, challenges.fr, automobile-propre.com (articles in French); france24.com (in English)
According to infrastructure provider Chargepoint, it has now more charging stations (18,000) in the U.S. than there are McDonald restaurants (13,900) and Starbucks cafés. Looks like the times are changing! cleantechnica.com
Research tip: A study by IHS Automotive found that the hybrid marketshare in the U.S. has not kept pace with the growing number of models available at dealers. While hybrid availability doubled from 2009 to 2013, sales have only increased from 2.4 to 3.0%. blog.polk.com via autoblog.com
Click tip: Next Green Car launched its ‘Zap-Map’ website showing all 6,176 charging points in the UK. 402 of those are fast-charging stations. zap-map.com via green.autoblog.com