Efforts to impress the autos we drive each day have been occurring for greater than a decade now. Other than a flood of EVs being placed on the highway not too long ago, that additionally means most carmakers who’re vital to the trade have in place a form of plan for the charging wants of the homeowners. Many even have their very own charging hubs already, however till this week, at the very least in North America, Mercedes-Benz was not one in every of them.
That one thing is a $1 billion plan to construct “North America’s quickest EV charging community,” and that by the tip of the last decade. Meaning it ought to supply charging speeds of underneath 20 minutes for autos to get from 10 to 80 p.c.
Being put along with assist from specialised renewable vitality firm MN8, the community simply opened its first-ever hub, situated on the Mercedes HQ in Sandy Springs, Georgia.
The hub is operated by a three way partnership between the carmaker and MN8 known as Mercedes-Benz HPC. The place is stuffed with 400 kW chargers provided by ChargePoint and has a lounge the place prospects can wait till their autos get their juice.
The hub can accommodate not solely automobiles, but in addition has room for vans of EVs that pull trailers so long as 26 ft (8 meters) behind them. On high of all of it, all of the electrical energy generated for charging wants comes from clear sources, making the hub carbon impartial.
By the tip of the present yr (meaning over the following month and a half), Mercedes-Benz plans to open related places in Texas and throughout the Southeast. The general plan is to have in place a minimum of 400 such places throughout the North American continent by the tip of the last decade.
In all, the German carmaker is betting on a complete of two,500 chargers to be deployed at these places, that means a median of six per hub. A few of them will likely be situated at retail places – offers have been struck for that with Simon and Buc-ees in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia.
Maybe an important factor about these places is that they won’t be unique to Mercedes-Benz automobiles. Identical to the one which simply opened this week in Sandy Springs, all of them will likely be open to all varieties of electrical autos, no matter make and mannequin, and their drivers. That’s made potential by the supply of CCS1 and NACS connectors at each location.
