The passing of the years and the corresponding maturity of electric vehicles is making the network of charging points in Barcelona adapt to the needs of users in a much tighter way than at the beginning. The extension of the network is now concentrated underground, in underground public car parks such as the Sant Antoni market, where the installation of the 1,000th charging point was celebrated this Monday.
At the same time, the network of chargers located on the city streets, which were the first to be installed, is being transformed. If the chargers in the parking lots provide energy little by little during the night or during the work day, those next to the sidewalks promote their use as a punctual and fast service thinking about those drivers who may be in a hurry at a given time.
To achieve this, the power of street charging points is being tripled, so that a mid-range car can gain 100 kilometers of autonomy in just over five minutes when until now it took more than a quarter of an hour, although these times They depend on each car and its technical characteristics. With this improvement, all charging points on public roads will be considered fast charging.
Charging points in public parking lots, classified as slow charging, will also increase their power, in this case double. This will reduce the time it takes for the car to recharge by half. Taking the same car model as before as an example, the 300 kilometers of autonomy previously achieved in 11 and a half hours of slow charging, with this modernization can be achieved in less than six hours.
The greater power of the charging points was announced during the installation of the 1,000th charging point, which became an event with the presence of the mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni, and the president of Seat and Cupra, Wayne Griffiths. “It is a symbolic gesture as Barcelona’s commitment to make it possible for the electric vehicle to be a democratic reality,” said Collboni, who leads by example and moves with an electric motorcycle on his private trips.
With the 1,000 points installed and managed by the public company Barcelona Serveis Municipals (BSM), the Catalan capital is the Spanish city with the largest electric charging network, almost triple that of Madrid. The socialists were in charge of this area during the last mandate and already focused the strategy on multiplying territorial capillarity to guarantee that all residents had chargers in the parking lots closest to their home. “Many speeches can be given, but the real green transition is this: making one, two, three and even 1,000 points,” Collboni highlighted about a network that today has 3,300 active users and an average of 14,000 monthly recharges.
Having achieved this first challenge, which had the economic boost of European funds, the municipal government intends to continue moving forward and is confident of fulfilling the previously outlined roadmap, now with its own funds. The objective is to reach 3,000 pre-installed charging points in 2025, as long as the socialists manage to approve the municipal budgets that include the corresponding investments.
If the government team’s accounts go ahead, the planned 2,000 new points will be pre-installed during the coming months. That does not mean that they will be able to be used yet, since all the necessary wiring and electrical infrastructure will be carried out but not the final charger. That last part, the one that the user takes with his hands, will be added as demand makes them necessary, since technology in this sector advances very quickly and today’s chargers are much better than two years ago and the same thing is expected to happen in two years or less.