If you want to know what the state of the German car industry is like, you should drive to the Autohof Lutterberg on the A7, twelve kilometers north of Kassel.
Lutterberg near Kassel (Hessen): 6 Ionity columns, 16 from Tesla. An American start-up shows our car industry how it works.
She has to wait ten minutes and is lucky. The VW ID.3, which drives up five minutes later, stands still until a pillar becomes free. Waiting time to catch a free cable. Now the cutting and stabbing at the pillars begins. By the way, there are 13 spaces available at Tesla next door, but we are not allowed to charge there, it is only possible the other way around.
BMW 8er as a petrol engine parks two charging stations, owner gets coffee. We have more of such pictures.
Charging stations can only be used on one side
E is the future for me
Hamburg-Altona: The police loads at a public column. Don’t they have a wall box at their station?
The display shows: “Loading not possible.” Call the power company, they restart, charging still doesn’t work. The next day, the friendly technicians found out: only one person can charge at this column at a time. Me: “Whaaat?” Technician: “Yes, it is.” Me: “And so what is promoted?” Technician: “Yes, that was the case in 2021.”
I briefly consider calling Transport Minister Wissing and advising him to replace all officials in his agency with experts. He may have already come up with this idea. Because something has to change:
1. We need a loading etiquette. If you can only load slowly, you should not block a fast charger if possible. And when it’s 80 percent charged, please pull the plug, the rest takes forever.
2. Putting 11kW chargers around town and limiting the charging time to two hours is ridiculous. That would be 70 kilometers in there. 11 kW chargers belong in the garage and not in public spaces, anything below 50 kW is nonsense.
3. Anyone who has received funding must ensure that the pillars always work and ALL
can load, really ALL.
4. Setting up four fast chargers at the rest area and hoping that there won’t be a traffic jam is like having a beer tent at the Oktoberfest: naive.
5. Dear dealers, take care of your customers. Anyone who buys E is not allowed to leave the yard without a charging card. Please show you how to do it.
We mustn’t mess it up. Because E is the future for me.
