VW is bringing fixed charging tariffs across 310,000 EV chargers

VW finally realised the importance of reliable charging infrastructure for an EV revolution to happen and decided to act on it. With a big fanfare, the company announced it is here to fix your charging problems.

So what is it doing? VW calls it a “quality offensive” (bit of a bad timing to be using military wording if you ask us) and it basically boils down to simplifying payments, increasing numbers of chargers available and adding some extra services to existing ones. Let’s look at the details.

From now on if you own either VW, Cupra, Seat or Skoda EV you will be able to charge it at any of over 310,000 chargers across Europe - including 10,000 fast charging stations - and pay a flat fee per kWh.

We haven’t got any details of the costs yet but we know there are 3 tariffs you can choose from, prices will vary from country to country obviously. Yet the essence will remain - flat tariffs regardless of time of day or demand. VW hopes this will ease the stress of buying an EV by customers who cannot have a charging point at home and we couldn’t agree more - that is a big issue.

The second part of this new plan is the “Selected Partner” program, which aims to highlight charging stations with convenience offerings such as coffee shop or weather protection. The idea is to have your sat-nav direct you to not just the nearest charging station, but one with the options you can pre-select. Simple yet very convenient idea, if we are going to spend an hour charging our EV, we may as well have a coffee and a slice of apple pie.

The final component of VW’s master plan of conquering the world of EV charging is called “Plug&Charge”. Marketing department at VW clearly needs more coffee. This option will become available in all vehicles based on the MEB platform and will come via OTA update. But what does it mean?

It means that once you’ve had an update and you pull up at the charger and plug the cable in, your car will identify itself to the charger and will begin charging immediately. Confused? Didn’t all VW cars do it already? It’s the bit when you have to pay or choose the payment method that is axed from the process.

If implemented well it might make a lot of difference, these are small but significant changes to the issues many of us have put up with for a while. It has the potential to make EV ownership easier, especially for those who are still on the fence.

Numbers are impressive enough - 310,000 EV chargers are already in the new system with 10,000 fast chargers and a plan is to have 45,000 High Power Charging stations in Europe, US and China by 2025. VW went a bit optimistic claiming they are “like no other car manufacturer” by investing into a fast-charging global network. Again - VW, please - more coffee. There’s one company that has been doing it for a very long time, that company made it an essential part of their EV strategy to provide owners with free (initially) charging points located all over the world. The name of that company…. coffee!

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