Volkswagen shows production version of ‘power bank’ for electric cars

Volkswagen has presented the ‘almost final’ design of its portable charging station. The mobile charging station has a battery capacity of 360 kWh and, according to VW, can also be used to store green energy, for example. Series production will start in 2020.

At the Geneva motor show, Volkswagen is showing the design of its ‘power bank for electric cars’, after it already announced it was working on this at the end of last year. The mobile charging station has dimensions of 1.2 meters by 1 metre, Volkswagen does not mention the height.

The Mobile Charging Station can operate independently and is thus a mobile charging station that can be used in places where charging capacity is temporarily required. It can also be connected to the mains, so that it can continuously charge cars. In this way, the mobile charging station is also suitable for the temporary storage of green energy, for example from solar energy.

Volkswagen says the charging station can fast charge with up to 100kW. Four cars can be charged simultaneously, two with direct current and two with alternating current. Earlier, the manufacturer said that it takes about seventeen minutes to fully charge the battery of a Volkswagen e-Golf to 80 percent. That corresponds to 28 kWh.

The charging station uses the same batteries as the Volkswagen MEB platform. Batteries that are no longer suitable for use in cars due to wear and tear can still be used in the mobile charging stations. In this way, Volkswagen wants to give batteries from its electric cars a second life.

In the first half of this year, Volkswagen will set up the first units of the mobile charging stations at its headquarters in Wolfsburg. After that pilot project, Volkswagen wants to start producing the charging stations on a larger scale in 2020 at its factory in Hanover.