Stellantis develops its brand of charging stations
(Paris) The Stellantis group announced on Tuesday the development of a complete electric charging offer, from the installation of home terminals to access to networks of public terminals, aimed at facilitating the transition of its customers to electric cars. .
The group with 14 brands (including Peugeot, Fiat and Jeep) will launch its “Free2Move Charge” brand in North America shortly before extending it to Europe and thus hopes to “remove the barriers” to electric mobility, including “the ‘anxiety’ about being able to recharge, according to a statement.
Free2Move Charge will offer companies and individuals, whether or not they are customers of the group’s brands, the installation of terminals at home, where the majority of recharges have currently taken place, and soon systems allowing a building to be powered by the battery of the car (V2G).
“Free2move Charge GO” will also offer access to a network of public terminals, with reservation systems and loyalty programs, through partners, promising, for example, access to almost all of the more than 500,000 European terminals – an offer similar to that of competitor Volkswagen with its “We Charge” application.
This structure will “support Stellantis in its strong electrification strategy and become a natural extension of the group’s brands,” said Ricardo Stamatti, vice-president of Stellantis, in a press release.
“It will be the brand for our entire charging and energy ecosystem,” he explained during a conference call.
In Europe, the services will be offered in “eleven countries” by “the end of the year”, detailed Magdalena Malgorzata Jablonska, commercial manager of the “Recharge and Energy” branch of Stellantis.
“We’re going to have a lot of partners” including energy companies and other automakers, Stamatti said, without naming any, adding that Stellantis “continues to evaluate” Tesla’s NACS standard, which already includes Ford and GM among its partners.
“The majority of our investment starts this year,” he also explained, without detailing the amounts.
The terminal operator Atlante, the reference network of the manufacturer Stellantis, opened its first stations in France in the spring. It plans to install a hundred other fast and ultra-fast stations in less than two years.
Resulting from a partnership between Stellantis and the Italian company NHOA (formerly Engie EPS), world number three in energy storage, Atlante aims to constitute the first charging network in Southern Europe, with 3000 terminals by the end of 2023 , and 35,000 terminals by 2030.
