A new type of electric vehicle (EV) charger that can deliver enough charge for 60 miles of driving in one minute is being developed in Poland.
Ekoenergetyka – Polska is working on a series of charging stations with the capacity to deliver charging speeds from 750 to 1500kW.
They will be known as the Network of Ultrachargers (NeU) and will launch in Germany and Poland by the end of 2023.
Initially, the chargers will have a capacity of 750kW – enough to provide 60 miles of range in one minute in the average passenger car or four minutes for 250 miles of range.
The company also claims that it would take around seven minutes to provide 60 miles worth of power to an electric truck.
Dagmara Duda, president of Ekoenergetyka-Polska, said: “In our R&D centres, we create and improve technologies and products that allow us to dynamically develop electromobility at its best, in all market segments, regardless of the location.”
The new solution will be implemented in Germany and Poland first. By the end of 2023, Ekoenergetyka and its partners will launch a network comprising 22 charging stations. The hubs will be located in the vicinity of motorways and in several urban centres, with the aim to serve, among others, utility vehicles and municipal services.
Ekoenergetyka-Polska has been designing and producing fast charging stations for EVs for 12 years. So far, the company has launched more than 1200 charging stations in 130 cities in 18 countries.
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Matt has been an automotive journalist for eight years. As senior staff writer he is responsible for the automotive content on Fleet News and also contributes to Automotive Management. Prior to this, Matt worked in the automotive industry for 10 years.
Ed - 19/04/2021 11:59
The one thing a lot of people speak about is "range anxiety", but the real problem is charge time and availability of charging. If these stations ever became mainstream, it would be a game changer for electrification. This is especially so for those left behind because they can't charge at home, range anxiety would be a thing of the past, but the question is whether it's a practical solution to be taken up en masse? Consider this; to replace a 10 pump forecourt you would need a supply of at least 7.5MW (for the 750kW chargers), which is not an insignificant amount of power. Multiply this across a country and we'd start to see problems balancing the grid when significant loads such as these would be coming on and off the grid frequently. Nothing says in the statement whether a proportion of capacity would be derived from on site battery storage obtained during low usage periods, but I'm guessing that this would need to be a factor, as having the equivalent demand of 7500 houses per site, is a pretty major proposition, especially if demand varies considerably minute by minute. The other issue is whether battery technology will actually develop to such a point that charging like this would be possible, before the magical 2030 deadline. If not, then I can see a lot of people spending a lot of time at "fast" chargers just charging their company cars because they can't charge at home and being rather upset having to do so.