Volkswagen have had a pretty tough time since Dieselgate, and rightly so, that was a terrible time in the company’s history. The best strategy to rebuild their reputation would be to accelerate their transition to zero-emission vehicles.
The ID.3 is Volkswagen’s first mainstream, volume production EV and is about to go on sale in many European countries from July 20th.
Ahead of that release, VW have announced they are making progress on the infrastructure-side of electric vehicles. In the UK, the company has now installed 200 Pod Point electric chargers at 200 Tesco stores in the UK.
Tesco is a major supermarket chain in the UK and while we’ve seen charging added to fast food outlets like McDonalds, this is a good indication we’re about to see supermarkets also added to the list of locations where you can recharge, while shopping.
The first locations were turned on back on September 2nd, 2019, so it’s an impressive rollout inside a year. Given the UK’s small footprint, the full map of locations reveals great coverage across the country.
The Pod Point chargers are made up of:
- 7KW fast chargers – which will be free to use.
- 50kW rapids which will be priced in line with market rates.
- 22kW chargers where 50kW rapids are placed.
It’d be great to see the likes of Coles and Woolworths, or even Aldi for that matter, begin on a similar rollout here in Australia.
When people shop at a location like Westfield, it is likely you’ll be there for hours. During that time, a charging EV, could easily reclaim dozens of km of range, replacing the range spent driving to the shops and back.
When it comes to more casual shopping like regular groceries that take less time, it’s likely you’ll only grab a fairly small amount of charge. At the bottom of Pod Point’s website, they actually show the amounts taken at each charging location from any of their more than 3,000 public locations across the UK.
These charging volumes are often between 5kWh and 15kWh. The cost of each of these charging sessions would be negligible and certainly worth it if they’re successful in stealing customers from the competition.
