LAS VEGAS — Mercedes-Benz is taking a web page out of the Tesla playbook on electrical car charging.
The luxurious automaker revealed plans Thursday at CES to develop a world community of 10,000 high-speed chargers powered by inexperienced vitality. The rollout will start this 12 months within the U.S. and Canada and increase to Europe, China and different main markets by decade’s finish.
Not like Tesla’s proprietary community of greater than 40,000 Superchargers globally, the Mercedes branded chargers can be open to different automakers’ autos from the outset.
Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Okayällenius described the charging community plans as a “differentiator” for the model, which seeks to go all-electric by 2030 in prepared markets.
“That is about adoption,” Okayällenius stated on a media name early Thursday. “We wish to give Mercedes clients all over the world but one more reason to hitch us on the journey in direction of electrification.”
The general funding within the charging community can be within the “low single-digit” billion euros, Okayällenius stated.
In North America, Mercedes will accomplice with renewable vitality and battery storage operator MN8 Vitality to develop the websites, and with tools supplier ChargePoint to produce the chargers.
Mercedes and MN8 Vitality will make investments about $1 billion within the North American community over the subsequent six to seven years.
“We consider it is a bankable asset,” Okayällenius stated. “That is one thing that it is possible for you to to monetize whenever you come out of the funding part.”
Charging infrastructure stays a vital problem for EV adoption. Automakers have to this point relied on a group of third-party public charging networks, they usually have lacked management over reliability and the charging expertise.
Okayällenius acknowledged a sturdy charging infrastructure is critical to drive EV gross sales.
“Our clients deserve a compelling charging expertise that makes electrical car possession and long-distance journey easy,” he stated. “We cannot take a wait-and-see strategy for this to be constructed.”
Mercedes-Benz supplier Jeff Aiosa stated the model’s funding will assist transfer steel.
EV adoption is being held again by a scarcity of affordability, buyer issues of vary anxiousness, and insufficient public charging infrastructure, stated Aiosa, proprietor of Mercedes-Benz of New London in Connecticut.
However he stated a Mercedes nationwide community of quick chargers “ticks two of these three packing containers.”
By 2027, Mercedes stated it can have greater than 400 websites and a couple of,500 chargers in North America. The community will provide as much as 350-kilowatt charging and be upgraded because the know-how advances.
Whereas the community can be public, Mercedes clients will obtain particular pricing and preferential entry by way of a reservation system.
Different advantages embrace a Plug & Cost operate, which will not require Mercedes clients to swipe a bank card or use a cellular app to start out charging.
Like Tesla Superchargers, the Mercedes chargers will talk straight with the car by way of the charging cable.
“There can be seamless integration between the automobile and [charger] software program,” Mercedes-Benz Chief Know-how Officer Markus Schäfer stated on the decision. “We wish to make charging like fueling — a pleasing expertise.”
Non-Mercedes clients will have the ability to entry the chargers utilizing a wide range of cost capabilities.
The stations can be positioned the place Mercedes clients store, resembling luxurious retail developments and dealerships in main inhabitants facilities.
“It is about location, location and placement,” Schäfer stated. “We all know the place our clients are; we all know the place we’re promoting electrical autos.”