Electric mobility is expanding at an astonishing rate: Electric Vehicle (EV) sales are expected to hit 8.4 million by 2025, while sales of Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) are predicted to reach more than 25 million vehicles – or 23% of global sales. This dramatic shift away from fossil-fuel driven vehicles means a growing need for easily available charging points, as well as preparation for the further changes yet to come. Vattenfall has been not just laying the groundwork but actively expanding its network of charging points for much of the past decade – and they’re not stopping any time soon.
Electric vehicles were first seen on the roads as early as the 1830s but despite their popularity with consumers a combination of factors, including Henry Ford introducing mass production and the discovery of Texas crude oil, made gasoline-powered cars the norm.
It wasn’t until the late 1990s that the modern push for electric vehicles started to take off, with the first mass-produced hybrid electric car, the Prius, hitting the Japanese market in 1997 and going global in 2000. By the time Tesla came on the scene in 2006, the market was primed for electric and hybrid options.
Vattenfall’s Electric Vehicle Commitment
With nearly 100 thousand electric vehicles registered across Europe during Q2 2019 alone, it’s obvious that those cars need to be powered – and consumers as well as transport and fleet enterprises need an easy, convenient way to ‘fuel up’.
Vattenfall, one of Europe’s largest electricity providers, is always on the lookout for future trends. About ten years ago, when the first EVs slowly started to appear, the company saw a great opportunity – and in 2009 installed its first charging station in Amsterdam.
“At that point in time the charging point was like a wall socket with a key to gain access,” explains Basten De Jonge, Chargepoint Engineer, Vattenfall. “Today, we have about 2500 charging stations in Amsterdam alone, with more than 5000 charging sockets.
“Ten years ago, we made a big commitment to providing connected charge points for electric vehicles to Europe. We currently have about 15 000 across Europe and are putting more than 180 stations in the ground each month. Our target is to become a top three player in e-mobility.”
Connecting Electric Charging Stations
It’s Tele2 IoT connectivity that makes Vattenfall’s charging stations work, and it’s 2CONTROL (Cisco Jasper) that allows them to monitor the stations. Vattenfall is also developing their own state-of-the-art backend solution, which is hardware supplier agnostic.
