Ionity launches first 350-kW EV chargers in the UK
It's part of the group's effort to cover Europe in future-proofed juice machines.
If you build it, they will come. That's the idea behind Ionity, which hopes to improve EV adoption rates by establishing fast-charging corridors all over Europe. Its efforts continue this week with the installation of new, high-powered chargers in the UK.
Ionity announced on Friday that it has installed its first 350-kilowatt high-speed EV chargers in the United Kingdom. Located in Maidstone, along the M20, Ionity's tech will provide enough juice to fill up their EVs in as little as 20 minutes -- well, that's what'll happen in the future, at least, because as of this writing, no EVs are able to accept charges that powerful.
But the idea isn't to cater to the present. Ionity wants to future-proof EV infrastructure under the belief that a fleshed-out system will more readily convince buyers to move from gas or diesel to electricity. Volkswagen Group, which is a part of Ionity alongside BMW, Ford and Daimler, is working to add 350-kW charging capabilities to its future EVs in order to bring charging times closer to parity with a trip to the gas station.
Even better is the fact that Ionity's UK chargers won't be pulling from dirty sources. Instead, the company has partnered with Octopus Energy to cover the charging network with 100% renewable energy. Eventually, these green sources will power all 40 sites Ionity intends to establish, each carrying up to six 350-KW chargers.
Ionity's station in Maidstone will soon have some siblings in Milton Keynes and Gretna Green. On a wider scale, the company wants to install some 2,400 chargers across Europe by 2020. Ionity chargers aren't limited to vehicles from automakers participating in the consortium. So long as your EV uses the CCS charging standard (the most popular standard alongside ChaDeMo), it can work with Ionity's hardware.
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