The first stations will be deployed in VW's hometown of Wolfsburg, Germany.
Volkswagen is working on a mobile station that can charge electric cars (like the German automaker's upcoming I.D. models)
wherever it's needed. Stations like this could be carted in for
large-scale events like concerts, supplementing conventional charging
stations, VW said in a press release.
The mobile station has its own 360-kilowatt-hour battery pack,
allowing it to charge multiple vehicles without being connected to the
grid. It includes two DC and two AC plugs. The faster AC plugs can
charge at a rate of 100 kilowatts, enabling full recharges in as little
as 17 minutes, according to Volkswagen. The automaker said its station
could be used for both electric cars and e-bikes.
The station can
also charge itself at a rate of 30 kW when plugged into an external
power source. That being said, because the station is designed to be
moved about, operators can simply swap a station with a depleted battery
pack for a station with a charged pack when needed. Stations could also
be plugged in to absorb excess electricity and discharge that power
during periods of higher demand, helping to balance the grid by smoothing out the peaks and valleys of electricity demand.
As
of now, it's unclear when Volkswagen will deploy these charging
stations on a large scale. The first stations will be set up in VW's
hometown of Wolfsburg, Germany, in 2019 as part of a pilot project. More
stations will be deployed in 2020, the automaker said, but no other
details were offered.
A comprehensive network of charging stations
is essential to get more people buying electric cars, Volkswagen said,
including the automaker's planned lineup of I.D. electric models.
Globally, the I.D. family will include everything from a basic hatchback to the Microbus-inspired I.D. Buzz van (VW won't sell every model in the United States). It's part of a larger plan to launch 50 all-electric models across multiple brands by 2025.
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