Fully Charged?

Six months ago, I wrote my first blog about my electric car. I am now better informed and remain convinced about the main benefits of my car: A perfect combination of quiet sustainable speed. However, I still feel like a pioneer and finding the next plug is still the biggest challenge.

You are probably also aware of how much harder it is to get up in the morning in the winter. Neither me or my car enjoy the cold. When I get into my car in the morning, it’s already preheated. That’s the best feature I have ever had in a car. But when I check the battery level, I am afraid I won’t get to work and home again. This means finding a parking space with a charging station is a top priority!

I usually charge my car three times a week at work. SAP has reserved spaces for battery-powered cars (BEV) that cannot be used by the plug-in hybrids (PEV). My employer is constantly increasing the number of electric cars. The German SAP fleet now has 1150 EVs, which include 200 BEVs and 950 PEVs.

SAP is constantly seeking to make driving an electric car a more attractive proposition. An important part of this is improving the charging options, both at work and at home.

• More Charging Stations

In Germany alone, SAP has already added 54 charging stations in 6 months and will have 400 charging stations by end of the year.

The parking garage where I park has been upgraded and now has new charging spaces with better performance and shorter charging times. In my parking garage alone, we now have over 100 charging spaces. Nevertheless, it would be less stressful for me, if I had a powerful charging station at home.

• Charging at Home

SAP encourages us to charge our cars at home. My company pays a subsidy for the purchase of a home charging point, such as a wallbox or a mobile wallbox charger. I am looking forward to getting my own wallbox in the near future.There was also the opportunity to participate in a pilot project, where SAP provides an intelligent charging package over a period of two years. You must own your own home to do this, and even if you do, finding the right location for your wallbox is not always easy.

• Smart Charging

The third approach is the development of an innovative charging concept. Setting up and maintaining a car park with charging stations is very expensive. This is due not only to the required hardware, but also due to potentially very high investment costs in physical expansion of the grid, which will be required to charge more cars in parallel. Therefore, a solution is currently being developed that distributes energy intelligently across the different charging stations. For example, when you arrive in the morning and connect your car, the system could calculate an individual charging plan, which observes parameters such as how long your car will be at a charging station, the total number of cars and their availability at the charging stations, and the amount of energy available throughout the day. This enables available energy to be better utilized and distributed, and investment costs in infrastructure to be saved, whilst increasing the number of charging stations. We can look forward to the outcome of this future-oriented project.

It remains very exciting! And even if it isn’t perfect yet, it feels great to be involved in such an innovative journey.