“The network gets going”
German carmakers BMW, Daimler, Audi and Porsche – usually “best enemies” – joined forces a year ago to develop e-car charging infrastructure, Max Hälger and Stefan Mayr write for Süddeutsche Zeitung. The brands teamed up to “to share the burden of initial losses” and install thousands of charging stations across Europe by 2020. Together with partners from other industries, such as utilities innogy and EnBW, the carmakers want to beat Tesla on the speed and comfort of e-charging technology, and are ready to invest more than the US brand “to boost people’s willingness to buy an e-car,” the article says. Porsche in particular is pushing to install 350-kilowatt (KW) “Turboloaders” – which will be three times faster than Tesla’s, and are yet to hit the market.
Read the article in German here.