The Silent Revolution: Electric Vehicles (Part 3)
How can a company install charging infrastructure for EVs?
Written in partnership by MAHLE and BABLE GmbH
Did you miss part 2? Here you go:
About Schulz Group
The Schulz Group has been an expert for many years in the automotive industry, specifically in engineering, production, and product experience as well as in commercial vehicle construction. The companies of the Schulz Group plan and construct production plants or special machines and develop components and software solutions also for highly efficient lithium-ion battery systems for high-performance electric vehicles or for storing renewable energies. Schulz has various customers in the automotive world who have placed great trust and recognition in their services and products for decades. While the individual companies provide specific solutions, the group stands for valuable synergy effects from networking to knowledge management. The Schulz Group is dynamic and growth-oriented, with all the advantages of a family-run company: leanly organised, flexible, reliable, great focus on personal contact with customers and partners as well as an open approach to each other.
The Schulz Group shapes the future of mobility through solutions that are more innovative, smarter and more efficient.
Because Schulz has a future-oriented perspective, they acknowledged that climate protection is one of the most important topics of today and sustainable mobility is an important solution component. To develop sustainable mobility, Schulz decided to make an active contribution.
For Schulz, a project aiming to install charging infrastructure at the workplace demonstrates an environmentally compatible further development of mobility options at the work and promotes the mobility of employees.
The planning of the charging infrastructure started in 2020. The installation was started in March 2021 and the project was successfully completed in a few weeks. In Ravensburg at the Schulz headquarters, 22 charging points are now in operation, thereof two charging points have 22kW charging power for visitors and short-time parking. The other 20 charging points are used by employees and for long-term parking.
The project was implemented with various partners — a charging hardware supplier, installation partners and groundwork partners. The charging points are mainly used internally by various companies of the group. Moreover, visitors of the company can recharge their EVs during their visit. The charging points are initially accessible free of charge. At a later point in time, the charging power can be provided at charging fees.
- 20 single-phase charging points with up to 7.2kW
- 2 three-phase charging points with up to 22kW
- Integration of the photovoltaics on the roof possible
- Implementation period of about 3 weeks
Interview with Mr. Steffen Schlegel from Schulz Group
1. What are the reasons for your company to install charging infrastructure for employees and fleet cars?
The installation of a charging infrastructure represents our company values and what we stand for. We already had five charging stations in use and decided to expand in terms of the rising number of electric vehicles in our fleet cars in 2020. A part of the electricity comes from the solar panels on our roofs.
In addition, a significant point is that an investment like that contributes to climate and environmental protection and therefore constitutes an efficient green alternative.
2. What are the insights gained during the installation?
We were happy to be able to implement this project with an experienced company like MAHLE and their startup chargeBIG. The planning phase began in autumn 2020 and the implementation took place in spring 2021. The entire process went according to plan and ran smoothly.
3. Do you have recommendations for other companies on how to prepare and implement a charging infrastructure project?
From our experience, we can say that a possible future installation should be considered in the construction phase of the office building.
We would recommend finding a general contractor, who combines the installation of the charge stations with a digital solution in order to record power consumption. For example, an App to start and check the current status of the loading process.
4. How did you finance the charging solution?
Fortunately, we were able to receive funding from the state of Baden-Württemberg for the costs (up to 40%) and covered the other part ourselves.
5. What has the feedback been from your employees?
The Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Our employees especially like the possibility to check the charging process with the app. Furthermore, our employees can charge their fleet car for free while they’re at work. Our visitors can also park and charge for free during their visit.
The cooperation with chargeBIG also stands out positively — in case of problems they fix them immediately and reliably.
6. Have you thought also about offering charging solutions for the employees’ residences?
We are currently gathering feedback about our running charging infrastructure and will base our future decisions on this information.
We are excited about such a challenge and will continually work further to develop electric mobility.
Stay tuned for Part 4 next week!
