FOLLOWING the success of Audi’s preliminary charging hub, which got here on-line in Nuremberg late final 12 months, the Ingolstadt-based agency plans to arrange extra hubs in Zurich, Salzburg and Berlin.
The idea incorporates a high-end charging station with reservable fast-charging factors, a lounge space to chill out or work, electrical scooter service, and meals and grocery supply service.
To reap the benefits of the feature-rich charging hubs, customers will need to have a PnC-capable Audi e-tron mannequin in addition to an lively e-tron charging-service contract.
The Nuremberg hub has proved a hit for Audi to far: the model reported 3,100 prices on the facility between January and the top of April. To place that quantity into perspective, that’s a mean of about 24 prices per day throughout the six reservable charging factors.
The primary of the brand new websites, in downtown Zurich, will likely be a extra compact charging-hub pilot web site that may – like related ones in Salzburg and Berlin – change into operational later this 12 months.
Audi got down to supply fast-charging infrastructure able to assembly calls for that will quickly exceed the present grid capability. The model’s answer was to make use of second-life batteries for power storage in a community of cubes, every of which gives two charging factors.
With a complete of two.45MWh of interim storage throughout the dice community, prospects can cost with as much as 320kW of energy in any respect six charging factors.
Based on Audi, a complete of 80 EVs might be charged every day with out reaching the bounds of the power storage system’s capability, together with its 200kW “low-voltage community” energy enter and 30kW from photo voltaic panels on the roof.
When the primary hub opened its doorways on December 23, Audi stated that the idea would serve those that couldn’t cost at residence and meet on-the-go city charging demand.
“We need to use it to check versatile and premium-oriented quick-charging infrastructure in city house,” Audi charging hub undertaking supervisor, Ralph Hollmig, stated on the time.
“We’re going the place our prospects don’t essentially get up within the morning with a totally charged electrical automotive and… desirous about rising charging demand sooner or later.”
Round 60 per cent of charging classes on the Nuremberg hub have been from repeat prospects, which signifies that Audi’s imaginative and prescient was in keeping with what fashionable EV consumers need.
Value might properly have been an element for purchasers utilizing the hub, too, as a result of Audi claims that utilizing the charging hub’s fast-charge service prices about the identical as charging at residence.
“We’re offering folks in city areas with charging on the value they’d pay to cost utilizing the Wallbox at residence,” Hollmig stated.
Whereas the charging hub in Zurich will likely be smaller than the Nuremberg hub, will probably be primarily based on the identical modular design. Audi has additionally confirmed three further websites in German metropolises by 2023 to assist meet rising charging calls for in city centres
