Volkswagen to build 12,000 charging points in its parking lots in Germany; 10% of its parking spaces
17 June 2015
The German Press Agency dpa reported that Volkswagen plans to build 12,000 charging points for electric vehicles in the next few years at its company parking lots in Germany—10% of the company’s 120,000 parking spaces for employees. The plans were announced by CEO Martin Winterkorn behind closed doors at the National Conference on Electric Mobility earlier this week in Berlin, according to unnamed sources cited by dpa. Volkswagen subsequently confirmed the plans.
According to the German National Platform for Electric Mobility, there are currrently some 4,800 publicly accessible charging points and another 100 fast charging points in the country.
Although Winterkorn reportedly said that it is not the business model of the automobile industry to build charging stations, VW wants to set an example, as e-mobility in Germany has not really budged. “Therefore, in my view, much is to be said for a large investment partnership of government and industry for the best possible public charging infrastructure in Germany,” dpa quoted Winterkorn as saying.
Where VW leads, much of German industry will often follow.
This sort of development throws a different light on PHEVs with the average AER of around 22 miles on the EPA which are becoming the industry norm.
Not only would this enable some to charge at work as well as at home so doubling the daily electric range, but might shift the balance of convenience for some with no convenient access at all to charging at home such as apartment dwellers.
Posted by: Davemart | 17 June 2015 at 08:13 AM
Good first step? Many more should be coming.
Posted by: HarveyD | 17 June 2015 at 08:50 AM
You will want to put chargers in company car parks as the Germans have a huge amount of solar electricity and the time to use it is during work hours.
You'll have all the usual parking problems - are the electric spaces exclusively for the use of electric cars, etc.
They probably need a grant system that each person with an EV gets 1 (or even 2) chargers installed (one at work, one at home).
Then, you need work chargers which can charge 2 cars at a time from a single post.
Posted by: mahonj | 18 June 2015 at 12:18 AM
The problem in Germany is that its high latitude means you get basically zilch out of a solar panel for several months of the year in the winter.
They are attacking the problem of providing a high renewable society with enormous energy and sophisticated technology, but it still ain't San Diego, and what would be a total solution is SoCal is almost useless for substantial periods in Hamburg.
Their decision not to use nuclear for fear of tsunami in Bavaria remains crazy, and makes the problem immensely difficult.
It also explains: 'why hydrogen'.
Posted by: Davemart | 18 June 2015 at 12:43 AM
@ Davemart
You raise the impression as though you were very familiar with the local situations in Germany. How many months per annum do you reside in Germany to participate in solving problems peculiar at this latitude? Or are you a permanent resident in Germany?
Posted by: yoatmon | 18 June 2015 at 03:44 AM
yoatman:
Why on earth do you imagine that you have to be resident in Germany to read the calculations of the amount of sun it gets at different times of the year?
The angle of incidence of the sun in winter remains the same, whether you are resident there or not.
Here are the insolation figures for Hamburg, since I earlier happened to name it, in kwh/m2/dy
http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/hamburg.html
Note that it varies from a high of 4.9 in July down to 0.39 in December.
That remains true regardless of the residency status of anyone interested.
Posted by: Davemart | 18 June 2015 at 08:01 AM
yoatmon is using, consciously or not, a Marxist-inspired tactic used to silence people with contrary opinions or facts. It's called disqualification.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 18 June 2015 at 02:02 PM
@EP:
I thought he had a very high opinion of the quality of my celestial connections, since it seems that the sun will rise and set at different times in Germany when I happen to be resident than in its normal course.
Posted by: Davemart | 18 June 2015 at 02:58 PM
The Germans are not asking solar to do the job alone. Renewables are a suite of energy sources: Sun, wind, biomass, hydro, etc. In winter when solar is at a loww wind tends to take up the slack; http://c1cleantechnicacom.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2014/08/Screenshot-2014-08-08-12.43.20.png
Posted by: ai_vin | 19 June 2015 at 08:43 AM
Wind is doing a sucky job of it. Germany's grid-related CO2 emissions jumped from 307 million tons/year in 2011 to 319 mmtpy in 2013. Had the 7076 MW of German nuclear capacity shut down in 2011 stayed on-line, about 50 million tpy would not have been omitted and emissions would have fallen to about 270 mmtpy.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 20 June 2015 at 12:18 PM
s/omitted/emitted/
I must need new glasses again.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 20 June 2015 at 03:12 PM