I understand to not build in Bulgaria or Serbia, but in Romania there are lots of ev’s, more per 1milion people than countries that already have ionity such as Estonia or Latvia, and also in Greece or Romania there are lots of turists, so why aren’t you making some stations also here?
Great interview! I have almost stopped use IONITY due to often long queues (because there are only six chargers at every site) and almost at least one broken chargers (at least in Sweden) I use Tesla Superchargers instead. Never queues and rarely a broken charger. And should one charger be broken, there are 39 others to chose from 😉
Loved this interview! I was pleasantly surprised by the COO. This made med hopeful for the coming 2-3 years as someone charging at Ionity chargers on every long trip!
This was great. Very candid answers from Marcus, within the limits of the possible in such a competitive market place. With my Ioniq classic, I regularly hop from Ionity to Ionity, now hoping for plug and charge to become my new reality. Thank you.
Thank you, Bjorn, for asking this question for Eastern Europe. Regarding plug and charge, I have got Enyaq and it works perfectly, I do not have to faff around with app ot RFID, it takes less than a minute for the handshake.
I would love to see one or two 50 kW chargers on sites with restaurants! I don't want to get up from the table during my meal just because the car charged from 15 to 80% too fast... So maybe those triple chargers (with or without Chademo) are not that bad. 😉
Great interview, and good point from Bjorn about Ionity's design language. On a transcontinental journey, there's no more reassuring sight than a bank of Ionity chargers, preferably without a queue..
Yea really great interview Björn , nice to see that the are growing or planning to grow at least , Marcus was great really open with what he could share with us big cudos to both for the great talk.
I really dislike the recent Ionity price hike, but the COO is a really nice guy. I saw other interviews with some big UA-camrs and Marcus. He really gave some interesting insights.
I am sure Greece is a tourist destination and it should have been included in your expansion plans. For the time being Tesla lowered the prices of their cars and expands its supercharger network. Thats why Tesla is the top ev car seller in Greece.
He talks about people driving there from northern, western and central europe, if I understood correctly, which is a real thing for e.g. Croatia. I don't know how many people actually opt for a 20h+ car journey to Greece. I would tho 😅
now you can see why those Tesla SuperChargers are so reliable: much less parts inside - Marcus mentionded their effort to service their IONITY charges incl. spare parts logistics (scanner, screens)
Well.... regarding the first part, we do have a lot of cities here in Romania with over 300k population, so it would get a lot of internal use (since the price of their subscription would make the price per kw like 30 % cheaper than most of the fast station around Romania). Second, maybe people from Germany, Poland, Austria & others would drive to Romania with their electric cars if they would know that chargers are there and available. Just saying. I've tested a lot of their station in my way to Italy, they are quite reliable, work fine with the ID.3 that I was driving and they of course have a lot of stall available, which is always a plus.
I do like the distinctive look of the Ionity dispensers. Having a somewhat different look for a future lower power dispenser is also a good idea, but hopefully still easy to see from a distance.
Thanks to Marcus and Ionity, and Bjørn, for taking the time to answer questions that many EV drivers have. I find it interesting that Marcus claims that Ionity's kWh price is not much less than residential kWh rates. He mentioned other costs they have, but not the utility peak kW demand charges, which can be about 20,000-30,000 Euros/month for a 12 stall site like this one. Typically commercial and industrial kWh rates are much lower than residential, but customers must also pay the monthly charge for the peak demand for that month. I suspect that Marcus is referring to Ionity's total utility bill, including both energy (kWh) and demand (kW), when he says their rates are not much lower than residential rates.
Good to see monthly subscriptions are coming.... as I only tend to use HPC chargers for 2 weeks per year ... getting the yearly subscription doesn't make sense then, though getting cheap HPC charging all year round is a nice benefit.
I hoped you would ask not only about Plug & Charge, but also Autocharge (that does not need much support on the car side, just unique MAC adress). I'd be curious why they don't support it, do they consider the security side of it problematic? For example Fastned and EnBW support Autocharge.
This is why I ever never use such "start-ups" for charging ov my EV park, the way of thinking is how to make charging spots even expensive than before... Tipical German way of undestanding of the market!!!
Super interesting interview! It is confidence inspiring for those considering an EV to hear these expansion plans. Big kudos to Marcus for being open and honest with the answers. Good point about Plug&Charge, I had completely forgotten about this. When EV's are to be for the masses I think this will make things much easier on long trips for the average user, who is not interested in cars. For a wider EV adoption there is still a lot of things that need to become common knowledge.
Very interesting interview! Its logical that they want to make a profit, but as the owner of a GREAT MG4 here, with no own charger (living in a appartement building) i have the watch the cost of charging. Here in the Nederlands where i live AC charging on the street is € 0.59 /kWh, Ionity is €0,79 /kWh. Best option for me is to go to a Tesla Supercharger, there its a.t.m. (it changes a lot) € 0.45 /kWh (and € 0.50 at peak time). So, Tesla chargers are king for me.
Best option for everyone is Tesla Supercharger. And this is a EU funded project, with this kind of prices. Incredible! Another Rip-off on EU citizens money.
15:15: power sharing on the AC side is supported even by the original ABB trippel charging.. So you can load manage a site with the old chargers. Could be used on locations with multiple 50kW chargers. This makes it possible to upgrade a old site without increasing the site grid connection. Two tripple chargers uses about 75kW, replace the one with a 150kW charger, and cap sites power to 150kW, by using load management... The 50kW is already paid for...
Its great that they will expand but sadly very few will stay with them due to their new pricing policy. In Sweden the kWh price on Ionity with biggest subscription increased with 73%.
That’s not really surprising. He said they have around 2400 outlets in 480 locations. With 4% down that’s 96. Which means that at least one charger on every 5th site is down. Add to that that they might be somewhat conservative in their numbers and also that failures are probably not evenly distributed.
@@UloPe there aren't 480 locations in the UK. There are only 19. In my experience 1/5 chargers have been down that is 20%. I may have just been unlucky in the thirty or forty times I have used ionity but it seems odd. I now mostly use gridserve they seem to be more reliable but they don't have anywhere near enough.
@@tangerinestormThe only time I used Ionity the app said chargers were available but actually there was a queue. Countless Audi e-tron drivers were having trouble making the chargers work, spending more time blocking the charger whilst talking to customer services than actually charging. The charger rebooted when I tried to use it, but that somehow resulted in a free charge, the only positive from the whole mess of an experience. Had they been reliable they probably wouldn't have had a queue. Add in the sky high prices and app only payments and I doubt I will ever use one again. Not the hassle you need on a long journey. In the UK it's either Gridserve or Tesla if you want a reliable nationwide experience. Or podpoint if you want reliable destination charging. Instavolt looked promising but their chargers are slow and expensive and usually come in twos or fours which make it tricky if you're planning a long journey and don't want to deal with queueing. They are however handily placed and becoming plentiful.
Crazy him saying that at those prices /kWh they take a minimal markup and barely break even. And then Tesla superchargers cost half of Ionity /kWh. Good luck getting occupancy higher lol.
@@didi156 The power network costs alone are enormously high and to date there is actually no BEV that can use the 350kWh. A different strategy would have been much better here, because doing this just for the sake of "prestige" does nothing for the customer, except for high costs and slow expansion. And the 96% uptime is good compared to some other competitors, but Tesla has 99.95% here - rather bad for a "prestige project".
96% uptime... But only from Ionity reporting system perspective... I believe that the real uptime is more 85%. I called Ionity few times about charger not working, in most of the cases they told me the standard IT answer "Everything is working from my side". They are usually not aware that there is something wrong. Anyway, I still use Ionity. @Bjorn, great interview! Thanks!
Jep, I experienced this with a few charging providers. It takes a phone call to let them know that something is wrong, which is quite strange considering how much they can remotely monitor.
With monthly subscription I will consider Ionity now. I drive much more in the summer months. Also I hope not all of us with 40-50kW cars aren't paying the whole investment cost for the few 300kW cars since that wouldn't be fair.
In Germany AdHoc/PayPerUse is between 16-49% more expensive than Tesla SuperChargers with much lower redundancy and prob less up time and Tesla is not the only cheaper option so that also peak power lovers can get a better deal elsewhere...
29:13 Actually there’s no more subscription plans available; I mean, those who have a subscription plan paid can still use it, but if you want to subscribe now, you can’t. At least that’s what’s happening in many countries and what ionity says on the website. Also, in Portugal, ionity chargers are the fastest chargers available; but, because it’s so more expensive that the other chargers, almost no one uses it, unless you drive a BMW, Mercedes or Porsche because those car manufacturers have special prices.
Because of the lack of very high power supercharge the best electric car to get in Romania is Tesla (except the cheap Dacia Spring). BTW @bjorn let’s have a 1000km challenge with the cheapest EV in EU.
we suggested them in email but they don't even expand at the most touristic area of Spain, he should fly to China and see what charging station network means. Buy Tesla only which has proper charging network!
Good interview. Would have liked to know: 1. Why Ionity closed their Twitter account 2. How they plan to deal with peak demand and specifically queues during holiday times - surely just installing more chargers will be cost prohibitive
First measure should be to increase the number of charging points at busy sites. Second measure could be higher prices during busy hours and lower prices during off-peak hours to avoid or at least reduce congestions and waiting queues - and incentivise charging during off-peak hours.
He's a cool guy and seems to know what he's doing. Seen him recently doing an interview with carmaniac, that was also great. I just dont get how manufacterers got into electric cars and charging - I mean there was tesla and they must have been investigating in how they do it. How did the come up with the idea "plug and charge? lol! we want a card to carry around we have to hold to the stations 5times before it maybe works". Thats a thing that just wont get into my brain. But its the same thing for people in germany asking for creditcard paying. What is next? coins?
02:20 I'm very disappointed with Ionity's strategy for Romania and Bulgaria. His explanation that these countries aren't tourist destinations and therefore not worth investment is shocking. In essence, Ionity seems to cater exclusively to people in Western countries, even though its founders (automotive manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes, Ford, VW) sell their EV cars in Romania and Bulgaria. Adding to the frustration, Ionity received grants from the EU, which means that Romania and Bulgaria contributed, yet Ionity claims that this region lacks business potential. This doesn't make sense at all. In contrast, Tesla achieved significant sales in Romania in 2022 and 2023 and invested in superchargers even before selling a single car in this country. Besides, the electric vehicle market in Romania is the second largest in Eastern Europe, following Poland.
You are absolutely right, but it's not enough! Romanians and Bulgarians need to take action on this matter instead of just complaining on UA-cam. They should bring up this issue with their political representatives in the European Parliament. This situation is a direct consequence of Austria and Holland rejecting these countries from the Schengen Area. It's illogical for Ionity to invest in other smaller markets that, when combined, do not match up half of the Romania's size (@ECO Drive proved this on his channel), unless you consider Romania's exclusion from the Schengen Area.
The main reason gas stations are covered is that they need to have an oil separator and too much rainwater would require a much larger cleaning system. That is why the rainwater is caught by the roof. The convenience is just a nice by-product.
Thank you for this great, interesting video which covers most of the current hot questions! Credit card payment becoming mandatory doesn't make sense imho, it just makes everything more expensive and I don't think it will be used much, since most people have their preferred roaming contract, sometimes it even comes with the car. And when Plug&Charge is working with more car models, credit card payment becomes completely obsolete, so the CPOs have to put up and run the infrastructure at high costs, but it will never pay off. People asking for that credit card payment are usually car journalists who only drive electric with a press car they get once, or people renting or borrowing a car from somewhere. Everyone who drives electric regularly has much better solutions to their disposal...
When is one universal chip for all charging companies/chargers throughout the Europe coming? Annoying to have 20 different apps on phone with all detalis registered on each one.
12:40 - okay, I've payed in Mai 2023 18,954 ct/kWh for home electricity. In Germany, charging operators get 18 ct/kWh THG-Quote and they get money from the state. So I don't see how they come to 79 ct/kWh
Tthe Ionity charging parks with their hardware are simply too expensive. (about 130k per charging station) Even if you have a margin of €0.60 per kWh, that would be around 220 MWh per column or around 4500 BEVs to get to zero here. Running costs, such as the mains connection (may well be several 1000€/month) are not even considered here. Other operators have far lower costs here (Tesla ~42k / stall)
In most cases people from all over Europe drives to Italy and then takes the Ferry to Greece (Igoumenitsa, Patras etc.) So I don't think Ionity has planned this well enough.I hope the partnership with local companies will work well for us.
Thanks for this interview. Is it possible to react on the positioning of the charging points? Traveling Europe with a caravan was a bit disappointing. Not the availability but only @ FastNed and Total Energies was charging possible with caravan hooked up. Let me know if you want some pictures from these modern charging stations.
About 3 references to the Portuguese roaming system. Somewhat enigmatic IMO. Being Portuguese, I wonder if Portugal is in the forefront of European countries or in the back with this system.
On both ends. We have a system that is great for easy of use for the costumer, charge anywhere using any operator card/app, but this approach is very bad for competition, operators can’t fully give you promotions or anything, so prices are very high and everything is metered by the minute, not kW.
My gut says they got caught napping in the UK. Most of their sites here have the same number of chargers as those in far more sparsely populated countries, and they're almost always full here. Would also add, they're spaced about the same distance apart as in countries like France and Germany too. Overall not suited to the UK's population density.
Awesome thank you both! Obviously, we want plug or swipe and charge! The whole app and fill in life history and confirm via email and tap in the code add your payment details and select charger and and and and, that is still seen in this market, is a super bad experience destined to die.
In Germany you can see what the status of Ionity in relation to Tesla. At Lutherberg A7 (north south axis) in the middle of Germany they have 6 chargers and Tesla 16 chargers. Just the relationship between the two. Tesla did the very most of it on their own money. Ionity needs always taxpayers money. Their chargers are awfully overengineered for only very view cars who really need it.
True! That is why they do not care, they have taxpayers money to do whatever they want. As long as EU will remain, they will have no problem in doing this. If it would be a true free Market in EU, they would be long gone into bankruptcy.
Still no car can use 350kW. Split power chargers would have been far better. Even if the second charging point gets blocked when a BEV is charging with more than 175kW, would be much better for the general public, since half the charging capacity would cover 99% of all BEVs - that would mean cheaper prices / faster expansion / more charging points
Why not come to Romania? This year the number of EVs will exceed 30k with sales of new EVs doubling YoY. Tesla has 6 V2 sites (40 stalls) with two new sites late this year and early next year. Tesla is selling here more than 1000 units per month since the beginning of the year with only 5 Tesla sales agents in one shop.
Very dissapointed about his mentality about Romania and Bulgaria,it seems that for him this two countrys are not touristic.I will do all posibillity to avoid this stations in my trips in Europe because of his ideea.Tesla is allready coming with chargers so it will be perfect.The east have a lot of electric cars so i allready send this to our group of friends with electric car.Bye bye Ionity,hello Tesla Supercharger
The nearest Ionity from Sarajevo is in Zagreb, thats 400km 😢 thats a huge problem for us living in Bosnia but i understand we are not your problem we are not in the EU 😅
Sadly not much of use for Ionity chargers in Croatia, cause they're all CCS. But sure, CCS is a new default. But still, chademo should still be available for older cars.
Bjorn, BJORN can't you see those people with the white Audi are struggling to get that charger going Shiiiiit Quick before they give up and drive off!! lol
Everybody is always complaining about the price of high speed charging. In Belgium almost all AC chargers or more than 0,60EUR/kWh. I don't understand why the AC chargers are so expensive
Ick bin aus Rumänian und verstehe ich nicht warum kann keine Charger bei uns őffnen .ist doch scheiße was Er sagt.brauch ich nicht warten dass die Touristen aus Deutschland Frankreich etc kommen ,kőnnen machen aber Er sollte fűr uns wat őffnen .🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
So.... Ionity is not expanding to Bulgaria and Romania because the Germans do not travel "touristically" to these countries??? What about Romanians and Bulgarians that ARE travelling touristically to the west?? So Ionity owners: BMW, Mercedes, Ford,Hyundai and the VAG group just said they don't really care about their customers in Eastern Europe. People should stop buying their cars.
Marcus Groll voiced his thoughts aloud. He exposed that Ionity is intended exclusively for Western countries and not for the less affluent individuals in Eastern Europe. Car manufacturers have seemingly determined that people in Eastern Europe should stick to conventional car stocks that are no longer appealing to Western countries.
I feel that all these fast charging companys are missing the real money making trick will be on slow chargers eg 7kw in places were people will be parking for long periods of time e.g 1 to 4hrs build them cheap and make many more of them people will be more lightly to plugging if they know they can leave the cars parked for hours while doing there daily tasks. Car parks with solar overhead is where the future is and the real money will be make fast chargers are amazing but there is only x amount that are needed where as slow charging spaced are unlimited. Simple economics more costomers lower individual profits margins but more profits overall.
The answer Mr. Groll's given to the first question is a load of crap. It doesn't make much sense for them to overlook Romania, especially when it's a bigger market than some places they're already in (combined). It feels like they're only thinking about German, etc. customers traveling abroad. If you're from Romania and buy from their brands, tough luck! On the other hand, Tesla seems to be doing things right.
"We decided not to go eastern that Hungary/Croatia, because...." - because Ionity is funded with EU Money, and maybe Mr. Groll do not know but Romania and Bulgaria are part of EU, so their money goes to fund Ionity but they do not get this service. Nice EU !!!!! Do not worry, Tesla saw there demand, and they do not get EU money. And you wonder why is Model Y best selling car in EU :)
@@maxknudsen1342 great question...I would investigate this though. Check the eurostats how much money they pay versus how much they receive. Come back please with the answer. You will be surprised with what you will find out. Thank you!
Should have asked him «How do you think Tesla manages 99,95% supercharger uptime and why do you not ask them for help?». This is the problem with not having both hardware and software in-house
Let's not give solutions here if we don't know the reason behind it. Also, Ionity's reliability really improved in last years. I'm regularly using this network and don't have problems. I think people complain about charging speed where actually the cause is lack of proper battery preheating.
Bjørn did a great job interviewing and picking interesting questions to ask. Likewise Marcus was great also, with very informative answers.😀
I understand to not build in Bulgaria or Serbia, but in Romania there are lots of ev’s, more per 1milion people than countries that already have ionity such as Estonia or Latvia, and also in Greece or Romania there are lots of turists, so why aren’t you making some stations also here?
Great interview! I have almost stopped use IONITY due to often long queues (because there are only six chargers at every site) and almost at least one broken chargers (at least in Sweden) I use Tesla Superchargers instead. Never queues and rarely a broken charger. And should one charger be broken, there are 39 others to chose from 😉
love the interview setup Bjorn! Keep the awsome content coming! really interesting interview
Loved this interview! I was pleasantly surprised by the COO. This made med hopeful for the coming 2-3 years as someone charging at Ionity chargers on every long trip!
Fantastic interview! It’s always fun to see when your interviewee is just as excited as you. Marcus, thanks for you generous time, and insights!
This was great. Very candid answers from Marcus, within the limits of the possible in such a competitive market place. With my Ioniq classic, I regularly hop from Ionity to Ionity, now hoping for plug and charge to become my new reality. Thank you.
thank you Bjørn for bringing the Portugal situation to the table. it is a real shame and a classic show of corruption and friend favors on state.
Thank you, Bjorn, for asking this question for Eastern Europe. Regarding plug and charge, I have got Enyaq and it works perfectly, I do not have to faff around with app ot RFID, it takes less than a minute for the handshake.
I would love to see one or two 50 kW chargers on sites with restaurants! I don't want to get up from the table during my meal just because the car charged from 15 to 80% too fast... So maybe those triple chargers (with or without Chademo) are not that bad. 😉
Great interview, and good point from Bjorn about Ionity's design language. On a transcontinental journey, there's no more reassuring sight than a bank of Ionity chargers, preferably without a queue..
Yea really great interview Björn , nice to see that the are growing or planning to grow at least , Marcus was great really open with what he could share with us big cudos to both for the great talk.
I really dislike the recent Ionity price hike, but the COO is a really nice guy. I saw other interviews with some big UA-camrs and Marcus. He really gave some interesting insights.
Great Interview. Learned a lot. Thank you.
I am sure Greece is a tourist destination and it should have been included in your expansion plans. For the time being Tesla lowered the prices of their cars and expands its supercharger network. Thats why Tesla is the top ev car seller in Greece.
He talks about people driving there from northern, western and central europe, if I understood correctly, which is a real thing for e.g. Croatia. I don't know how many people actually opt for a 20h+ car journey to Greece. I would tho 😅
Awesome interview. Good job, Bjorn, and a big thank you to Herr Groll for his time!
now you can see why those Tesla SuperChargers are so reliable: much less parts inside - Marcus mentionded their effort to service their IONITY charges incl. spare parts logistics (scanner, screens)
Interesting, thanks Bjorn and Marcus.
Well.... regarding the first part, we do have a lot of cities here in Romania with over 300k population, so it would get a lot of internal use (since the price of their subscription would make the price per kw like 30 % cheaper than most of the fast station around Romania). Second, maybe people from Germany, Poland, Austria & others would drive to Romania with their electric cars if they would know that chargers are there and available. Just saying.
I've tested a lot of their station in my way to Italy, they are quite reliable, work fine with the ID.3 that I was driving and they of course have a lot of stall available, which is always a plus.
I do like the distinctive look of the Ionity dispensers. Having a somewhat different look for a future lower power dispenser is also a good idea, but hopefully still easy to see from a distance.
Thanks to Marcus and Ionity, and Bjørn, for taking the time to answer questions that many EV drivers have.
I find it interesting that Marcus claims that Ionity's kWh price is not much less than residential kWh rates. He mentioned other costs they have, but not the utility peak kW demand charges, which can be about 20,000-30,000 Euros/month for a 12 stall site like this one. Typically commercial and industrial kWh rates are much lower than residential, but customers must also pay the monthly charge for the peak demand for that month. I suspect that Marcus is referring to Ionity's total utility bill, including both energy (kWh) and demand (kW), when he says their rates are not much lower than residential rates.
Good to see monthly subscriptions are coming.... as I only tend to use HPC chargers for 2 weeks per year ... getting the yearly subscription doesn't make sense then, though getting cheap HPC charging all year round is a nice benefit.
Monthly subs are good for those who can't charge EVs at home. Not everyone is like you kid, that can charge their EVs at home.
I hoped you would ask not only about Plug & Charge, but also Autocharge (that does not need much support on the car side, just unique MAC adress).
I'd be curious why they don't support it, do they consider the security side of it problematic?
For example Fastned and EnBW support Autocharge.
This is why I ever never use such "start-ups" for charging ov my EV park, the way of thinking is how to make charging spots even expensive than before... Tipical German way of undestanding of the market!!!
Super interesting interview! It is confidence inspiring for those considering an EV to hear these expansion plans. Big kudos to Marcus for being open and honest with the answers. Good point about Plug&Charge, I had completely forgotten about this. When EV's are to be for the masses I think this will make things much easier on long trips for the average user, who is not interested in cars. For a wider EV adoption there is still a lot of things that need to become common knowledge.
Very interesting interview! Its logical that they want to make a profit, but as the owner of a GREAT MG4 here, with no own charger (living in a appartement building) i have the watch the cost of charging. Here in the Nederlands where i live AC charging on the street is € 0.59 /kWh, Ionity is €0,79 /kWh. Best option for me is to go to a Tesla Supercharger, there its a.t.m. (it changes a lot) € 0.45 /kWh (and € 0.50 at peak time). So, Tesla chargers are king for me.
Best option for everyone is Tesla Supercharger. And this is a EU funded project, with this kind of prices. Incredible! Another Rip-off on EU citizens money.
What? Public A/C charging is 0.59€ ?????
That's crazy! I pay less than half for the public chargers on the street. (Austria)
15:15: power sharing on the AC side is supported even by the original ABB trippel charging..
So you can load manage a site with the old chargers. Could be used on locations with multiple 50kW chargers. This makes it possible to upgrade a old site without increasing the site grid connection.
Two tripple chargers uses about 75kW, replace the one with a 150kW charger, and cap sites power to 150kW, by using load management...
The 50kW is already paid for...
Its great that they will expand but sadly very few will stay with them due to their new pricing policy. In Sweden the kWh price on Ionity with biggest subscription increased with 73%.
When can we expect to se Ionity charging station in Bulgaria and other eastern European countries?
very useful info package as Ionity is one of the important players driving the industry. Also nice guy Marcus. Greetings from Berlin 😉
I have never been an ionity station with all chargers working at least here in the UK.
That’s not really surprising. He said they have around 2400 outlets in 480 locations. With 4% down that’s 96. Which means that at least one charger on every 5th site is down.
Add to that that they might be somewhat conservative in their numbers and also that failures are probably not evenly distributed.
@@UloPe there aren't 480 locations in the UK. There are only 19. In my experience 1/5 chargers have been down that is 20%. I may have just been unlucky in the thirty or forty times I have used ionity but it seems odd. I now mostly use gridserve they seem to be more reliable but they don't have anywhere near enough.
@@tangerinestormThe only time I used Ionity the app said chargers were available but actually there was a queue. Countless Audi e-tron drivers were having trouble making the chargers work, spending more time blocking the charger whilst talking to customer services than actually charging. The charger rebooted when I tried to use it, but that somehow resulted in a free charge, the only positive from the whole mess of an experience. Had they been reliable they probably wouldn't have had a queue.
Add in the sky high prices and app only payments and I doubt I will ever use one again. Not the hassle you need on a long journey.
In the UK it's either Gridserve or Tesla if you want a reliable nationwide experience. Or podpoint if you want reliable destination charging. Instavolt looked promising but their chargers are slow and expensive and usually come in twos or fours which make it tricky if you're planning a long journey and don't want to deal with queueing. They are however handily placed and becoming plentiful.
Neither in EU!
Down to earth interview, love those! Also.. this means roadtrip to Munchen, you got invited ;)
Crazy him saying that at those prices /kWh they take a minimal markup and barely break even. And then Tesla superchargers cost half of Ionity /kWh. Good luck getting occupancy higher lol.
seems to me that going with 350kW chargers from the start wasn't an economically sound decision.
@@didi156 It didn't start as a for profit: for over a year one could charge as long as you wanted for eight euros :) #goodtimes
@@didi156 The power network costs alone are enormously high and to date there is actually no BEV that can use the 350kWh.
A different strategy would have been much better here, because doing this just for the sake of "prestige" does nothing for the customer, except for high costs and slow expansion.
And the 96% uptime is good compared to some other competitors, but Tesla has 99.95% here - rather bad for a "prestige project".
96% uptime... But only from Ionity reporting system perspective...
I believe that the real uptime is more 85%. I called Ionity few times about charger not working, in most of the cases they told me the standard IT answer "Everything is working from my side". They are usually not aware that there is something wrong.
Anyway, I still use Ionity. @Bjorn, great interview! Thanks!
Jep, I experienced this with a few charging providers. It takes a phone call to let them know that something is wrong, which is quite strange considering how much they can remotely monitor.
@user-bb7up7xv8m I called ionity helpline few times, however they were never able to help me.
Is plug-and-charge available for Tesla cars on all Ionity chargers?
Another great interview very informative. Thanks.
With monthly subscription I will consider Ionity now. I drive much more in the summer months. Also I hope not all of us with 40-50kW cars aren't paying the whole investment cost for the few 300kW cars since that wouldn't be fair.
In Germany AdHoc/PayPerUse is between 16-49% more expensive than Tesla SuperChargers with much lower redundancy and prob less up time and Tesla is not the only cheaper option so that also peak power lovers can get a better deal elsewhere...
Tak Bjørn :) Subscription was something I really wondered about :)
Very good interview. Thank you.
Monthly subscription is great for holidays. Looking forward to it.
29:13 Actually there’s no more subscription plans available; I mean, those who have a subscription plan paid can still use it, but if you want to subscribe now, you can’t. At least that’s what’s happening in many countries and what ionity says on the website. Also, in Portugal, ionity chargers are the fastest chargers available; but, because it’s so more expensive that the other chargers, almost no one uses it, unless you drive a BMW, Mercedes or Porsche because those car manufacturers have special prices.
Because of the lack of very high power supercharge the best electric car to get in Romania is Tesla (except the cheap Dacia Spring). BTW @bjorn let’s have a 1000km challenge with the cheapest EV in EU.
we suggested them in email but they don't even expand at the most touristic area of Spain, he should fly to China and see what charging station network means. Buy Tesla only which has proper charging network!
Very nice interview!!👍🏻
Good interview. Would have liked to know:
1. Why Ionity closed their Twitter account
2. How they plan to deal with peak demand and specifically queues during holiday times - surely just installing more chargers will be cost prohibitive
I asked them on Facebook, they did not close it, Twitter closed it
First measure should be to increase the number of charging points at busy sites. Second measure could be higher prices during busy hours and lower prices during off-peak hours to avoid or at least reduce congestions and waiting queues - and incentivise charging during off-peak hours.
@@laurenz138 Because it is competition for Tesla-Elon who owns Twitter? 😱
@@maxknudsen1342 lol
How come the other charging providers still have their Twitter accounts?
He's a cool guy and seems to know what he's doing. Seen him recently doing an interview with carmaniac, that was also great.
I just dont get how manufacterers got into electric cars and charging - I mean there was tesla and they must have been investigating in how they do it. How did the come up with the idea "plug and charge? lol! we want a card to carry around we have to hold to the stations 5times before it maybe works". Thats a thing that just wont get into my brain.
But its the same thing for people in germany asking for creditcard paying. What is next? coins?
That was a very exciting and informative interview and video, thank you for that
Also there are millions of Romanians travelling by car to Central EU or South in Bulgaria and Greece for summer holidays.
when back stage cost reveled, the current fast charging prices is appreciated
02:20 I'm very disappointed with Ionity's strategy for Romania and Bulgaria. His explanation that these countries aren't tourist destinations and therefore not worth investment is shocking. In essence, Ionity seems to cater exclusively to people in Western countries, even though its founders (automotive manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes, Ford, VW) sell their EV cars in Romania and Bulgaria. Adding to the frustration, Ionity received grants from the EU, which means that Romania and Bulgaria contributed, yet Ionity claims that this region lacks business potential. This doesn't make sense at all. In contrast, Tesla achieved significant sales in Romania in 2022 and 2023 and invested in superchargers even before selling a single car in this country. Besides, the electric vehicle market in Romania is the second largest in Eastern Europe, following Poland.
You are absolutely right, but it's not enough! Romanians and Bulgarians need to take action on this matter instead of just complaining on UA-cam. They should bring up this issue with their political representatives in the European Parliament. This situation is a direct consequence of Austria and Holland rejecting these countries from the Schengen Area. It's illogical for Ionity to invest in other smaller markets that, when combined, do not match up half of the Romania's size (@ECO Drive proved this on his channel), unless you consider Romania's exclusion from the Schengen Area.
I'll also be happy when having a roof, as gas pumps usually have, becomes a standard.
keeping out of the hot sun and rain
The main reason gas stations are covered is that they need to have an oil separator and too much rainwater would require a much larger cleaning system. That is why the rainwater is caught by the roof. The convenience is just a nice by-product.
Thank you for this great, interesting video which covers most of the current hot questions!
Credit card payment becoming mandatory doesn't make sense imho, it just makes everything more expensive and I don't think it will be used much, since most people have their preferred roaming contract, sometimes it even comes with the car. And when Plug&Charge is working with more car models, credit card payment becomes completely obsolete, so the CPOs have to put up and run the infrastructure at high costs, but it will never pay off.
People asking for that credit card payment are usually car journalists who only drive electric with a press car they get once, or people renting or borrowing a car from somewhere. Everyone who drives electric regularly has much better solutions to their disposal...
Also Truck Charging will go with MCS instead of CCS so they will separate places like gas pumps
God info from Ionity. Thank you Bjørn.
Great with autocharge, monthly subscription and card readers
When is one universal chip for all charging companies/chargers throughout the Europe coming?
Annoying to have 20 different apps on phone with all detalis registered on each one.
What about using solar roofs with batteries for cheaper electricity costs/more margins? Does it make sense from a business perspective?
At this moment, Ionity Castelo Branco, Portugal, only has two of eight stalls working. A few days ago, I passed there and the site was all down.
will Europe consider changing from CCS to the north american standard charge plug (ie Tesla plug) ?
No, because for home and destination charging on AC we have 3 phase witch the NASC plug doesn't support.
Never change a running system
will not happen even if the CCS is not optimal.
12:40 - okay, I've payed in Mai 2023 18,954 ct/kWh for home electricity. In Germany, charging operators get 18 ct/kWh THG-Quote and they get money from the state. So I don't see how they come to 79 ct/kWh
Tthe Ionity charging parks with their hardware are simply too expensive. (about 130k per charging station)
Even if you have a margin of €0.60 per kWh, that would be around 220 MWh per column or around 4500 BEVs to get to zero here.
Running costs, such as the mains connection (may well be several 1000€/month) are not even considered here.
Other operators have far lower costs here (Tesla ~42k / stall)
@@Zedus-rl9hp Don't forget they get money from the EU ... at every charger you see the co-finance label
Portugal 🇵🇹 is awesome with them but they’re the most expensive OPC in the whole country, they could explain also that
that was explained ;)
costs and earnings
for cars of some manufacturers it´s really cheap at Ionity
In most cases people from all over Europe drives to Italy and then takes the Ferry to Greece (Igoumenitsa, Patras etc.) So I don't think Ionity has planned this well enough.I hope the partnership with local companies will work well for us.
Thanks for this interview. Is it possible to react on the positioning of the charging points? Traveling Europe with a caravan was a bit disappointing. Not the availability but only @ FastNed and Total Energies was charging possible with caravan hooked up.
Let me know if you want some pictures from these modern charging stations.
What is the service life of this equipment, 12-15 years?
We want them in Bulgaria :)
Fines chargers are the best! Who needs Ionity?
About 3 references to the Portuguese roaming system. Somewhat enigmatic IMO.
Being Portuguese, I wonder if Portugal is in the forefront of European countries or in the back with this system.
On both ends. We have a system that is great for easy of use for the costumer, charge anywhere using any operator card/app, but this approach is very bad for competition, operators can’t fully give you promotions or anything, so prices are very high and everything is metered by the minute, not kW.
My gut says they got caught napping in the UK. Most of their sites here have the same number of chargers as those in far more sparsely populated countries, and they're almost always full here.
Would also add, they're spaced about the same distance apart as in countries like France and Germany too. Overall not suited to the UK's population density.
free wifi at charging sites would be useful. They have to have internet connections anyway. This would help cut down mobile roaming charges
roaming in the eu?
Maybe a good option for the UK or Switzerland.
I forgot about the background noise. I think they also could have done the interview in a VW Buzz while charging AC or something
Monthly plan and much much more stations in Poland :)
03:10 Portugal Mobi.e is super weird. Glad that Ionity is trying !
Awesome thank you both! Obviously, we want plug or swipe and charge! The whole app and fill in life history and confirm via email and tap in the code add your payment details and select charger and and and and, that is still seen in this market, is a super bad experience destined to die.
So, when are they expanding outside Europe 🙂
In Germany you can see what the status of Ionity in relation to Tesla.
At Lutherberg A7 (north south axis) in the middle of Germany they have 6 chargers and Tesla 16 chargers.
Just the relationship between the two.
Tesla did the very most of it on their own money. Ionity needs always taxpayers money.
Their chargers are awfully overengineered for only very view cars who really need it.
True! That is why they do not care, they have taxpayers money to do whatever they want. As long as EU will remain, they will have no problem in doing this. If it would be a true free Market in EU, they would be long gone into bankruptcy.
Still no car can use 350kW.
Split power chargers would have been far better. Even if the second charging point gets blocked when a BEV is charging with more than 175kW, would be much better for the general public, since half the charging capacity would cover 99% of all BEVs - that would mean cheaper prices / faster expansion / more charging points
I was charged £45 for £7 worth of electric. They do this in the UK with card payment but if you stop three times thats £135 out your account.
Why not come to Romania? This year the number of EVs will exceed 30k with sales of new EVs doubling YoY. Tesla has 6 V2 sites (40 stalls) with two new sites late this year and early next year. Tesla is selling here more than 1000 units per month since the beginning of the year with only 5 Tesla sales agents in one shop.
Wondering if Ionity install large batteries as 'buffers' like Tesla and many others? That way could they purchase cheaper cost power overnight...
If the batteries had low cost and lived forever without failure they probably would.
@@hemmper like their chargers 😜
Trucks HAVE to have their own charge points just like for diesel at motorway service areas.
Very dissapointed about his mentality about Romania and Bulgaria,it seems that for him this two countrys are not touristic.I will do all posibillity to avoid this stations in my trips in Europe because of his ideea.Tesla is allready coming with chargers so it will be perfect.The east have a lot of electric cars so i allready send this to our group of friends with electric car.Bye bye Ionity,hello Tesla Supercharger
Ionity Passport give you only 18p discount in UK. Before it was half price 😮
The nearest Ionity from Sarajevo is in Zagreb, thats 400km 😢 thats a huge problem for us living in Bosnia but i understand we are not your problem we are not in the EU 😅
Ionity is down Most of the times in my Region. If half Stalls are working you re lucky.
Awesome content ,very good
Great video!
Sadly not much of use for Ionity chargers in Croatia, cause they're all CCS. But sure, CCS is a new default. But still, chademo should still be available for older cars.
98% uptime seems a low target to me. I'd have expected something like 99,8%.
Or maybe nein nein, nein nein percent?
Bjorn, BJORN can't you see those people with the white Audi are struggling to get that charger going Shiiiiit Quick before they give up and drive off!! lol
Model Y RWD videoes when? :(
Olmost 100.000 people drive from germeny Skandinavia to turkey take serbie Bulgaria to turisim.
Everybody is always complaining about the price of high speed charging. In Belgium almost all AC chargers or more than 0,60EUR/kWh. I don't understand why the AC chargers are so expensive
Ick bin aus Rumänian und verstehe ich nicht warum kann keine Charger bei uns őffnen .ist doch scheiße was Er sagt.brauch ich nicht warten dass die Touristen aus Deutschland Frankreich etc kommen ,kőnnen machen aber Er sollte fűr uns wat őffnen .🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
So.... Ionity is not expanding to Bulgaria and Romania because the Germans do not travel "touristically" to these countries??? What about Romanians and Bulgarians that ARE travelling touristically to the west?? So Ionity owners: BMW, Mercedes, Ford,Hyundai and the VAG group just said they don't really care about their customers in Eastern Europe. People should stop buying their cars.
Marcus Groll voiced his thoughts aloud. He exposed that Ionity is intended exclusively for Western countries and not for the less affluent individuals in Eastern Europe. Car manufacturers have seemingly determined that people in Eastern Europe should stick to conventional car stocks that are no longer appealing to Western countries.
If the chargers were also coffee machines they would attract more drivers.
of all the places to have an inteview...
What's wrong with that? Please elaborate.
@@bjornnyland i was expecting it to be very noisy... but it was ok
It was in fact quite noisy. But the mic setup gave ok sound.
I feel that all these fast charging companys are missing the real money making trick will be on slow chargers eg 7kw in places were people will be parking for long periods of time e.g 1 to 4hrs build them cheap and make many more of them people will be more lightly to plugging if they know they can leave the cars parked for hours while doing there daily tasks. Car parks with solar overhead is where the future is and the real money will be make fast chargers are amazing but there is only x amount that are needed where as slow charging spaced are unlimited. Simple economics more costomers lower individual profits margins but more profits overall.
BlackRock... so Ionity is becoming the Nestle of charging networks.
The answer Mr. Groll's given to the first question is a load of crap. It doesn't make much sense for them to overlook Romania, especially when it's a bigger market than some places they're already in (combined). It feels like they're only thinking about German, etc. customers traveling abroad. If you're from Romania and buy from their brands, tough luck! On the other hand, Tesla seems to be doing things right.
"We decided not to go eastern that Hungary/Croatia, because...." - because Ionity is funded with EU Money, and maybe Mr. Groll do not know but Romania and Bulgaria are part of EU, so their money goes to fund Ionity but they do not get this service. Nice EU !!!!! Do not worry, Tesla saw there demand, and they do not get EU money. And you wonder why is Model Y best selling car in EU :)
Do they pay EU money or do they receive EU money I wonder? 🤔
@@maxknudsen1342 great question...I would investigate this though. Check the eurostats how much money they pay versus how much they receive. Come back please with the answer. You will be surprised with what you will find out. Thank you!
Should have asked him «How do you think Tesla manages 99,95% supercharger uptime and why do you not ask them for help?». This is the problem with not having both hardware and software in-house
ask the Hyundai drivers about uptime at Sucs :D
Let's not give solutions here if we don't know the reason behind it.
Also, Ionity's reliability really improved in last years. I'm regularly using this network and don't have problems.
I think people complain about charging speed where actually the cause is lack of proper battery preheating.
@@Lascarnn it got better with the Halos...
the former chargers have been often broken in my eyes
Blauzahn reports higher downtime on Tesla chargers. Around 3% If I remember correctly.
@@tymanot Tesla mentions 99.95% uptime for 2022 in their report.
Their metrics is ">50% stalls operational"