Amsterdam EV Charging — How It Works (Original Videos)
Originally published on EV Obsession.
As you may know by now, I went on a little cleantech tour of the Netherlands
last month. Spending a few days in Amsterdam, Holland, I got to see
dozens of plug-in cars parked and driving around the city*. If parked,
they were generally parked at or near an on-street EV charging station.
I learned a little bit about these EV charging stations
from a few of the cleantech experts I interviewed during the week, but
then I got lucky on the evening of my last day there and actually saw a
guy pull into one of these charging spots. I interviewed him about the
process on video as he plugged in to charge.
I was also lucky to interview the cofounder of an EV charging station company, Blue Corner.
Hans Verwijs has been involved with electric vehicles for decades and
there probably aren’t too many people who know the Dutch EV market
better than he does. He told me a bit about Blue Corner and EV charging
in the Netherlands in the part of the interview featured below.
The coolest thing I think I discovered — mentioned by Karel Beckman of EnergyPost.eu (who hooked me up with Hans and other cleantech experts for my tour) as well as the VW Golf GTE driver who I met — was
that people can request from the government EV charging stations on
streets where they live, work, etc., and the government will install
them for free in a relatively short time.
So, below are the two videos mentioned above, followed by a bunch of pictures of electric vehicles charging in Amsterdam.
*Electric vehicles actually account for about 6% of new car sales in the Netherlands now (1 out of every 16½ or so cars). I think that puts it only behind Norway in terms of EV market share. If the Volkswagen Golf GTE were its own model (not a subset of the VW Golf), it would actually be the 13th best-selling car on the Dutch market.
So, if you go to the Netherlands, aside from enjoying the wonderful bike culture, see how many electric cars you can spot!
Pictures by Marika Shahan & Zachary Shahan | EV Obsession | CleanTechnica (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Courtesy: CleanTechnica
