The members of the NEXT-E charging infrastructure project for electric vehicles and e-mobility digital specialist Hubject have joined forces to make their combined fast and ultra-fast chargers available on one EV-charging application across six bordering countries: Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania. 222 multistandard fast chargers (50 kW) and 30 ultra-fast chargers (150-350 kW) will be integrated onto Hubject’s intercharge platform, the world’s largest cross-provider charging network, further enabling long-distance travel in the region.
The NEXT-E project, co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union, is a cooperation between four energy companies – namely E.ON Group entities from the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia, HEP- Hrvatska elektroprivreda from Croatia, MOL Group entities from Hungary, Croatia, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia, Petrol Group in Slovenia and Croatia – and two car manufacturers – to deploy 222 fast and 30 ultra-fast chargers in service stations across 6 Central and Eastern European countries according to the infographic shown below.
By cooperating with Hubject, the NEXT-E project significantly extends the influence of its e-mobility network, providing a long-distance charging infrastructure with a connection to an eRoaming platform.
Currently, access to EV-chargers is possible with the application of the participating company that has deployed the charger, leading to barriers in roaming and long-distance cross boarder EV. This is going to change. The addition of 222 fast and 30 ultra-fast chargers deployed by the NEXT-E consortium members to Hubject’s intercharge platform will make it possible to comfortably drive an electric vehicle from the Czech border to the Adriatic or the Black Sea, using only one application. As such, users will be able to charge their car in all charging stations of the NEXT-E project through Hubject’s intercharge platform, thus widely expanding the mobility of e-mobility customers in all NEXT-E countries.
“Next-E, and within that, MOL, has proven that it has the capabilities to thoughtfully create a coherent e-mobility charging network, while at the same time creating a new service for e-car users. Each of the Next-E chargers is delivered to a service station, combining existing experiences with new ones. In line with the plans of MOL Group, the next challenge is to create interconnected services (roaming), which will lay the foundations for further market collaborations in order to make it as comfortable as possible for e-motorists to drive across countries. The Hubject roaming platform service and their many years of experience will provide a great help in this and we are delighted to embark on this common journey”, said Róbert Tóth-Fekete, Head of MOL Group e-mobility.
“The implementation of the Hubject roaming service provides E.ON Drive customers with unlimited access to all charging stations supplied by the NEXT-E project, as well as to the charging stations connected to the Hubject roaming center. In Romania, the stations installed by E.ON will be operationalized on the Hubject platform until the end of this year, when we will finish the installation of all the 19 fast charging stations assumed within the NEXT-E project by E.ON Energie România. At this moment we are working on the installation of the last station that will be located in Lugoj, Timiș County on one of the main pan-European road transport corridors in our country: Constanța – Bucharest – Timișoara,” says Cătălin Iordache, general manager of E.ON Energie Romania.