As Volkswagen is expanding its electric car portfolio, more and more charging stations are being added to its German factories. In its domestic market, the company operates no fewer than ten sites where there are already more than 1,200 charging points. The number will significantly grow by the end of next year as VW is promising a major expansion of its charging network.
The company aims to install approximately 750 new charging points throughout the course of 2021. In the long run, VW pledges to introduce around 4,000 charging points at its sites by the middle of the decade. At the same time, the automaker’s dealers have also promised to expand their charging station networks to keep up with the growing number of EVs.
VW points out that a good chunk of the existing charging stations are publicly available and can be used by people who can charge their electric vehicles even if they don’t work for the company. The firm’s largest charging station network can be found at home in Wolfsburg where there are around 500 EV chargers available.
VW is going green in more ways than one as the company’s charging stations utilize only renewable energy sources. The company goes on to say several charging parks have been inaugurated in recent times across Germany, including in Dresden, Zwickau, Emden, Salzgitter, Kassel, Brunswick, Osnabrück, Chemnitz, and Hanover. Despite the coronavirus pandemic slowing down activity most of the year, VW claims it has clocked in more than 50,000 charging operations at its German sites.
The announcement comes only a few days after VW previewed an autonomous mobile charging robot for EVs that has reached the prototype stage and will be further developed in the years to come. Meanwhile, 2021 will be the year when the German marque will roll out what it describes as being a “flexible quick-charging station,” though we’ll have to wait to find out what that actually means.
As a refresher, VW was the very first car manufacturer to abide by the Paris Agreement by promising to become climate neutral by the middle of the century. To get there, some 50 EVs will hit the market by 2030.
Source: Volkswagen
