⚡Cheapest DC Bidi wallbox - BMW iX3 gets Bidirectional Charging in EU

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• Cheapest DC Bidi wallbox - BMW iX3 gets Bidirectional Charging in EU⚡

• 3 Links 🔗

• Meme of the week 🤡

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⚡Cheapest DC Bidi wallbox - BMW iX3 gets Bidirectional Charging in EU

Text zu BMW DC wallbox pricing, launch markets etc

Unless you live on the dark side of the moon, you’ve surely heard about infamous “Neue Klasse” (New Class) platform that BMW has been developing for several years.

At the recent IAA auto show in Munich, BMW showed the first EV that will be built upon this new platform, the new BMW iX3. The specs are impressive and include up to 400kW of peak charging rate, matching the likes of the Lucid Gravity SUV which also just had its European debut at the IAA.

But for EV charging nerds, like you and us, something else stood out during the launch: DC Bidirectional Charging.

The new iX3 will be BMW’s first electric vehicle that is making Bidirectional charging available to a broad customer base, outside of pilot and R&D programs. For this purpose BMW has partnered with Energy company E.ON to introduce a V2G offering with a complementary energy tariff, starting in Germany and then rolling out to other markets.

The interesting thing here, that our friend Jaap Burger pointed out on LinkedIn, is that the BMW DC Wallbox professional is available on the BMW configurator for a price of €2,175 (or even €1,716 in France).

To our knowledge, this pricing will mark the lowest direct-to-customer pricing for a DC bidirectional wallbox charger (w/ integrated inverter) that is broadly available to B2C consumers in Europe or North America.

For example, comparable offerings in North America are much more expensive:

• Wallbox Qasar 2 ~$4779 (excl. V2H equipment)

• Dcbel Ara ~$4999

Most other ones are not widely available on the market yet (Ambibox, Enphase, Solaredge, Mercedes, Emporia..) or require pairing with an external inverter (Ford, GM, Hager Energy/E3DC, Sigenergy..).

Let's go back to the new BMW Wallbox. It was also showcased at the IAA in Munich, where we were able to take a closer look at it. This might reveal how BMW is able to reduce costs and make the technology more widely available. The nameplate showcase is Wanbang Digital Energy Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of Star Charge.

What are your thoughts on this? Leave a comment, reply to this email or reach out to [email protected]

3 Links 🔗

• OpenLoop Credit Cards and Plug&Charge - best of both? 🤝: European charging roaming platform Hubject has collaborated with BMW and Mer to launch a new way to pay for charging: Combining ad-hoc payment via credit card with the convenience of Plug&Charge. For now the solution only works at a subset of charging networks that support both Plug&Charge technology as well as Hubject’s “Intercharge Direct” Ad-Hoc payment solution. (Link)

• World‘s first public High Power Charging Station Virtual Power Plant ⚡️: Our friends from Flexecharge launched the world’s first virtual power plant for DC fast charging stations with CPO Recharge in Sweden (SE3 region). Flexibility is the new gold in the energy world as there are times when demand needs to be adjusted to renewable energy supply to keep the grid stable by reacting to congestion. Through pooling the demand of over 500 HPC chargers, the companies can allocate part of their capacity for grid services (frequency containment reserve). Activations by the grid operator, throttle down the charging power (e.g. by 5 kW) for a duration of 15 seconds in average. (Link to Casestudy, Link to Podcast)

• Tesla pilots MultiPass - easier 3rd party charger access through integrated payments 🔗: For over a decade Tesla has mostly steered its customers to one charging network: Tesla Superchargers. But in recent years the company has slowly started to make it easier for its customers to also find and use 3rd party charging networks. It has added them to the Navigation system and even enabled automatic battery preconditioning for 3rd party DC chargers when selected as a destination. But now Tesla takes this idea one step further with the launch of MultiPass in the Netherlands. Essentially MultiPass is a Tesla-provided EMP service that allows Tesla customers to charge at 3rd party networks and pay a centralized bill through their Tesla account. Charging sessions can be started via the Tesla mobile app or by registering the Tesla Keycard as an RFID tag for Multipass. Tesla has stated that pricing will be variable and set by the charging networks, with Tesla acting as an agent for payments. Tesla is slowly integrating itself in the roaming ecosystem. What’s next? Plug and charge for Tesla vehicles? Superchargers fully integrated into other EMPs? 😀 (Announcement, Info on Pricing structure)

Have any of our NL-based readers been able to try this out yet? Send us a note to [email protected] if you had the chance 😃 

Most-clicked link last post: Was the LinkedIn post about Cirrantic embedding its charging wallet function into Apple Maps (Link)

Meme of the Week 🤡

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That's a wrap for this week! Let us know how you feel and leave some feedback (We read every single one of these 🙂 ):

Reader Review of the Week ✍️

Selected ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️Freakin’ awesome on ⚡Apple Maps launches direct charging payments in 🇪🇺 and wrote:

“Keep travelling and discovering more news. Finally I saw an electric tour bus here in Vancoucer, BC. What took them so long?”

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