The American company Blink Charging took advantage of CES in Las Vegas to present its new innovation. It is a charging station with a huge 55-inch screen, which allows, in particular, to display advertisements.
While the electric car market has developed rapidly in recent years, charging is a significant challenge. And for good reason, although some manufacturers and equipment manufacturers are approaching 1,000 kilometers of autonomy, including CATL with its Qilin CTP 3.0 battery, this is still a distant reality for most models. If this is made more realistic with the solid battery, it should not be integrated into production vehicles for at least ten years.
An innovative solution
Meanwhile, many players are entering the charging station market, while others are branching out and offering new offerings. This is particularly the case for charging flickeran American company founded in 1998. Little known in Europe, although present in Greece and Belgium, the company has nothing less than 30,000 charging points, spread over 25 countries worldwide and has recently arrived in the UK.
For this reason, the firm took advantage of the CES in Las Vegas, which closed on January 8, to unveil one of its novelties. Called the Blink Vision, it takes the form of a charging station with a futuristic look, which stands out from its competitors. its huge 55-inch screen.
As the Blink Charging site explains, these new charging points have two interests: to allow electric car owners to charge their vehicle, but also to offer companies a solution to broadcast announcements. In fact, it is possible to display both still images and videos on this LCD screen. A solution that is actually not completely new, since another American company, Volta Charging, offers a similar service.
But with the latter, the ads displayed allow drivers to pay less to charge your car, or even not pay a penny, depending on the number of advertisers. Where Volta Charging also has a big advantage is that it had already installed more than 2,000 stations of this type only in the United States last March.
many features
As explained by Blink Charging, these terminals are compatible with Apple Pay and Google Wallet through RFID technology. Thus, all you have to do is bring your smartphone or bank card close to pay for the recharge, whilea 7-inch touch screen start charging It remains to be seen if these charging points will integrate the networks of the different manufacturers, such as We Charge at Volkswagen or Kia Charge.
These terminals will also be equipped with the connectivity with the Cloud thanks to the 4G LTE network. On the other hand, nothing has been said about Plug & Charge technology, which allows you to connect your car without having to identify yourself through a card. A feature already offered in Ionity terminals as well as in Fastned, and compatible with Skoda, Cupra, BMW, Mercedes and Tesla vehicles, among others.
giving out a power of 19.2 kW for 80 A in alternating currentAs explained in the technical sheet presented by the company, these terminals are equipped with two 7-meter long cables and can charge two cars simultaneously. are equipped with universal J1772 connectors in the US, which means that they can be used by all electric cars on the market. On the other hand, Tesla owners will need to use an adapter to plug these terminals.
As a reminder, the Type 2 plug is the standard in Europe for alternating current. The company will then have to make some modifications to its terminals to install them with us. A date for its arrival in Europe has not yet been announced, while these charging points could compete with chargers destined for Tesla, for example. Nothing to do with the very fast charging technologies developed by Circontrol or even Nio with its 500 kW development solution, which will arrive here after China.
Nio officially presents its new ultra-fast terminal, capable of charging an electric car in just 10 minutes. This new technology, with a power of 500 kW, will be available from March 2023, without…
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