Happy Tuesday. This is Electric Avenue, the newsletter that tells you everything you need to know about e-mobility - all before your morning coffee gets cold. ☕️

We took a little break last week due to travel, sickness and the Thanksgiving holidays in the US 🦃. But now we’re back - and trust us, we’re bringing the heat this week with not one, but TWO exclusive onsite visits to up-and-coming DC fast charging networks owned by EV automakers. 🚗⚡️

Here’s what we have for you today:

• Next generation charging hub by Mercedes-Benz ⏭️🔌

• 3 Links 🔗

• Meme of the week 🤡

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Let's dive in!

Next generation charging hub by Mercedes-Benz ⏭️🔌

Imagine this: You buy an electric vehicle worth >$100k, a fascinating piece of technology. Excited to test it on the road, you go on your first long-distance trip where you plan to use public charging stations to recharge on the go.

But, reality will eventually hit you - probably in the 🇺🇸 harder than in 🇪🇺. Even in countries with well-built infrastructure, you will eventually be confronted with charging anxiety 😱:

• Charging stations are not functional → low reliability and predictability

• The surrounding space does not feel secure and convenience aspects people know from fueling stations like lights, trash bins, a roof, or a 24/7 store do not exist → bad customer experience

• You need to wait in a queue because of high congestion and lose valuable time → fear of availability

Mercedes-Benz listened to their (future) customers and announced a major global initiative to build a Mercedes-branded charging network last year (we reported). Now, only 11 months later, Mercedes has just launched the first charging hubs in North America (Atlanta) and Germany (Mannheim) - “Hold my beer” move incoming 🍺

Julius had the chance to visit their opening event for the first EU hub in Mannheim yesterday, Monday Nov 27th. More importantly, he got the chance to talk to experts on the Mercedes-Benz (MB) implementation team. We are excited to bring you some fresh, first-hand insights and pictures from the events. Let's plug in 😉 :

User Guidance🚦: Each charge point has a printed ID number at the pillar and the charger which is easy to read from the car when arriving at the hub. This will guide the EV drivers to their reserved stall (more on that later) and let them start a charging session from the HMI of the car. You would think - not hard to implement but why is it not done by many charge point operators? 🤨

Additionally, the hubs are equipped with a light bar on the pillars that signals the status of the charger (free = 🟢 / out of order = 🔴 / reserved = 🟡 / charging = 🔵). More interestingly, the blue bar also indicates the state of charge (SoC) status of the car - this unique feature is compatible with any car brand as it is based on standardized DIN/ISO communication between the charger and the vehicle. Once learned, this minimalistic design will be quite intuitive and helpful for drivers when arriving at the charging hub. 👏

Reservation Functionality 🔐: German Mercede-Benz (MB) drivers will love it 😍. Just as you can reserve a sunbed by the pool with your towel in the morning, you can now reserve a charging station at an MB Hub. 

45% of our readers (recent poll we did) have concerns about the reservation functionality at charging stations. However, the MB team acted very thoughtfully when designing it for their drivers and their hubs (for now the functionality will be available exclusively for MB drivers at MB charging hubs). Here is how it works (taken from Atlanta; reservations in the EU are not live yet):

1. Driver enters destination in the vehicle HMI 🗺️: The car will calculate the route including optimal charging stations based on the car’s charging capabilities and minimal detours.

2. Reservation from the car 🔐: 15 minutes before arrival at a planned charging stop at an MB hub, the car will reserve a charge point. This will give the EV driver certainty that there will be no waiting time at the hub.

   

   Reservation Notification in HMI via Kyle from Out of Spec

3. Arrival at the charging hub 🔌: Upon arrival at the charging hub, the car will guide the EV driver to the reserved charge point based on the clear numbering of the charge points (visible from the car). A reserved charge point is signaled with an orange light and a notification on the screen of the charging station (see screen below). The light and a notification on the charger’s screen will allow other EV drivers to know that this charge point is reserved. The MB driver can either charge at the designated charger within an additional buffer of 10 minutes (25 minutes total reservation time) or use any other charge point. This will automatically release the reservation and make the charger available to other EV drivers.

   

   Reservation Information at Arrival at the Hub by Kyle from Out of Spec

From a driver's perspective, all of this sounds quite simple (and it has to be!) but the hard part is to design the system that orchestrates the reservation process. Here are a few constraints and prerequisites for how MB made it work ⚙️:

• Detecting the trigger point for a reservation needs to happen dynamically based on the estimated arrival time (ETA) and availability of charging stations from the car’s navigation. MB has designed and implemented the technology within the car’s navigation system in a way that they can adjust the reservation parameters (15 before arrival + 10 minutes grace period) based on customers’ experience and feedback.

• Once triggered by the car, an available charge point is reserved via an API call at the charge point management system (CPMS). Theoretically, MB could connect to any other CPMS to unlock the reservation functionality at further charging networks for MB drivers.

• The reservation functionality is limited to a % of chargers (not specified - probably also adjustable) at any given site. This means that there will always be chargers available to customers without reservation (e.g. MB and non-MB customers). From a CPO perspective, this makes sense as you avoid lost revenue from charging sessions which would happen during the reservation time while giving confidence to drivers before arrival at the hub.

Locations and Expansion 📍: MB's location strategy is catered around the long-distance routes (in-house competition for IONITY and the US JV with other OEMs - two major charging networks where MB is also invested). Additionally, locations close to urban areas but with close connections to highways are set to be the preferred sites. Interestingly, MB will pursue a “brown land” strategy, which means that they will want to partner with existing infrastructure partners that operate co-located amenities like restaurants, and retail stores to offer a pleasant charging break. What we got to see in the first two hubs is the premium layout with a roof. There is another more minimalistic layout without a roof and simple stand-alone light pillars. This will cut costs and construction approval times. Until the end of 2024, there will be an additional 200 charge points (roughly 33 locations when built with 6 charge points) in Europe, 500 in the US, and 1.300 in the rest of the world (mainly China). Until 2030, MB plans with 2k hubs, a total of 10k charge points, and a three-digit million investment.

Pricing Insights 💵: For the beginning, MB drivers will be able to charge for free at the MB hubs. Ad-hoc pricing via credit card starts at 0,72€ / kWh without a blocking fee and the station in Germany is available via roaming in third-party EMP services. We got to know that this fixed price structure might not apply to newer sites as MB will evaluate pricing based on local energy and power supply costs, installation costs, utilization, and competition. Additionally, MB foresees offering a more dynamic price in their own charging service to steer utilization of public charging stations once available by CPO partners.

Energy and Peak Demands ⚡️: The MB Hub offers 6 x Alpitronic Hyperchargers with up to 300 kW power output shared between two connectors per charger. Additionally, the site is equipped with intelligent site-level load management which will steer the energy supply once the grid connection is maxed out as it’s below the theoretically required 1.8 MW. In the future, MB plans to equip sites with stationary battery storage to save on demand charges from grid operators. Hereby, the partnership with MN8 Energy in the US will be key because of their experience with large-scale grid batteries.

Partnerships 🤝: For Europe, MB selected E.On Drive as a partner for the deployment and operations of the charging infrastructure. However, MB will remain the commercial operator and “creator” of the charging experience at the MB hubs. A similar arrangement has been made with Chargepoint and MN8 energy in the US, where Chargepoint provides charging hardware and software solutions and MN8 provides financing and maintenance among other services.

Quick Thought 💭:

Charging ⚡️ is way more complicated than fueling ⛽️.

While one can argue if the buzz around the OEM hubs (also Audi & Porsche) is necessary or justified, the experience automotive OEMs will gain from being in the lead to operate a charging hub and prototype new functionalities to make charging more convenient is priceless. This will help the whole e-mobility ecosystem to level up (public) charging. At the beginning of the year, we wrote an article with some pros and cons for the question: Should EV OEMs own charging stations? Check it out and let us know your thoughts on the opening of MB's first charging hubs. 😊

3 Links 🔗

• Amazon to sell cars w. Hyundai 🧑‍💻: Starting Q3 2024 Hyundai vehicles can be purchased via the Amazon US online store. Vehicles purchased via Amazon are still delivered and (on paper) sold by local dealerships. This looks like a compromise between keeping independent dealers “in the loop” and moving toward a direct sales model (see OEMs like Polestar, Tesla, Lucid and Rivian). Additionally, Hyundai will use Amazon Web Services as its preferred cloud provider and will integrate the Alexa voice assistant in it’s next generation vehicles starting in 2025.

• Rivian rates part #2 💵: We recently reported that Rivian was switching its Adventure Network of DC chargers from free to paid. At the time we noted that pricing had not been announced. The network is still exclusive to Rivian vehicles, but Janek visited a site in Inyokern, CA last week and found that prices were displayed on the charger display. Rivian is charging $0.36kWh + a $0.50/min idle fee to its customers. There is a Tesla Supercharger at the same rest stop which has comparable pricing at $0.35/kWh with a $1/min idle fee. (Link with site pictures)

• New global standard to measure fast charging performance 📐: From 2024, a new global standard introduced by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) aims to make the fast charging performance of EVs more comparable. While adherence to the ISO/SAE 12906 standard is optional for manufacturers, it provides consistent measurements for range gain, charging time, maximum power, and charging efficiency in vehicle data sheets.

Most-clicked link last week: was the road trip video by by Robert Dunn from Aging Wheels comparing Teslas and Non-Teslas fast charging options near highways (Link)

Meme of the Week 🤡

🤣🤣🤣

Meme Note: Rivian is not yet open to other EVs but it’s announced to be opened in the future. The Porsche Charging Hub will remain Porsche exclusive. Besides its Power Swap Stations, Nio operates fast charging stations which are open to all EVs.

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⚡ Tesla V4 Supercharger Insights 🧐 and wrote:

“Love the details as it educates me ahead of turning up at one of these and wasting time (mine and others)"

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. The Electric Avenue team may hold investments in or may otherwise be affiliated with the companies discussed.