Enlarge image
No customer magnet yet:
Audi's only charging lounge in Nuremberg.
Photo: Audi
"This is how I imagine stores!"
At the beginning of January, Volkswagen boss
Herbert Diess
(63) was euphoric in a video on LinkedIn.
Together with Audi boss
Markus Duesmann
(52), he had charged an E-tron GT at the "Audi Charging Hub" at the Nuremberg Exhibition Center and now praised the idea of a lounge, "I think it's great to spend the time there".
Audi lures its electric customers in Nuremberg to the first floor for coffee, snacks and a bit of advertising;
the benevolent words of a CEO should be a marketing duty.
But the statement carried weight.
A few months earlier, Diess had reprimanded the charging joint venture Ionity for what he saw as a little premium-like location near the Brenner Pass;
Audi and Porsche have been working on the idea of a luxury shop for the drivers of their electric cars for a year and a half.
So far they haven't gotten very far.
Porsche boss
Oliver Blume
(54) and his people are planning a lounge on the Brenner Autobahn, colleague Duesmann only wants to expand carefully.
Even the fastest models need five minutes on fast chargers like in Nuremberg to fill up a range of 100 kilometers;
the project of more pleasant waiting is initially convincing.
The response is "consistently positive," says Audi after half a year in Nuremberg.
However, the numbers raise doubts.
Up to 80 e-cars can charge at the station every day.
According to Audi, the daily average is 24, the record is 54. Additional offers are now to increase capacity utilization.
A cooperation with the delivery service Gorillas (food to the charging station) and a meeting room, so the plan, could attract new customers.
Audi is silent on the cost of the cube in Nuremberg.
One thing is clear: the pilot plant is not profitable.
When Audi opens charging stations in Zurich in the fall and in Berlin and Salzburg later in the year, there will be correspondingly less luxury.
There will only be four connections in the Swiss metropolis instead of the six in Nuremberg;
the lounge is completely dispensed with.
For 2023, the Ingolstadt-based company has planned three more locations in Germany that have not yet been defined in more detail, and eight charging hubs are to be added in 2024.
Audi wants to concentrate more on urban areas, the colleagues from Porsche on highways.
Overall, given the forecasts for electric car sales, competition in the charging business is likely to increase;
the competition is also experimenting with premium offers.
For example, Tesla is adding lounges to the first supercharger stations.
From February to April, Polestar tested a "Powerstop" in Irschenberg on the A8 motorway and invited customers to take a test drive on site.
Enlarge image
Slimmed-down version:
In Zurich, Audi is planning without its own lounge.
Photo: Audi
Even in the less posh environment, a competition for charging dominance is breaking out among the automobile manufacturers.
Volkswagen, for example, has entered into partnerships with Iberdrola and BP, and Opel parent company Stellantis wants to open up 15,000 charging locations across Europe by 2025.
However, the competitors in this environment also include providers from outside the industry such as EnBW, Fastned or Chargepoint.
At Audi, they hope to develop a business model with the sale of electricity.
Above all, however, the stations are intended to boost automobile sales.
"Charging is not our core business," says
Ewald Kremlin
, who is responsible at Audi .
"Our concept should also help customers decide in favor of an Audi and not a Mercedes or BMW."
In the event that the idea of a more pleasant wait doesn't prevail in the end, the Ingolstadt company has taken precautions: the construction in Nuremberg can be dismantled again without much effort.
