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Janaki Jitchotvisut

Power Dot Raises €150M For French Electric Charging Station Expansion

As more people start using more electric vehicles in their everyday lives, greater access to reliable chargers is absolutely necessary. Battery technologies continue to improve, but as things currently stand in May, 2022, having more publicly available chargers around rather than less is crucial to societal EV adoption—especially in Europe, where the electric transition is ramping up very quickly at the moment.  

That’s why Portuguese electric vehicle charging company Power Dot was pleased to announce that it raised €150 million in order to triple its charging stations in France as of May 18, 2022. Currently, Power Dot has stations in a number of European countries, including about 2,500 in France alone. However, it has grand plans to expand its French network to include no less than 7,000 stations by 2025. 

The €150 million comes from an investment by private equity firm Antin Infrastructure Partners, which also gives the firm joint control of Power Dot, according to a release from the two companies. The company has so far installed charges in car parks (or “parking lots,” in American English) for shops and hotels where customers tend to park their cars for lengthy periods of time out of habit.  

In a short announcement video about this investment on Facebook, Power Dot specifically says that it wants “to create an EV charging experience embedded in people’s lives by installing chargers in every day, high-traffic locations where people naturally park their cars.” Accompanying animations show a number of small electric charging stations lined up on the curbs in front of restaurants, malls, and supermarkets, so people can recharge their vehicles while they’re running their regular errands. 

Given the differences between how gas or diesel vehicles are refueled and how electric vehicles are refueled, a rethink about how chargers are deployed as a part of urban planning and property development makes a lot of sense. While some people can and will continue to charge their electric vehicles at home, that type of charging isn’t accessible for everyone. Since electric chargers require more time than topping up a combustion fuel tank usually does, the standalone refueling station model isn’t the most practical choice for busy people, either.  

There are plenty of mountains to climb, even in a place like the E.U. where the push to adopt EVs is fairly strong. As Power Dot pointed out when making this announcement, companies operating in France had planned to have 100,000 charging stations operational by the end of 2021. To date, however, there are only 60,040, and only about 8 percent of those are fast-charging stations.

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