MAHLE chargeBIG successfully realizes its first project for public charging infrastructure. The subsidiary of the MAHLE Group thus achieves another milestone and assumes the public operating role at this location. The 28 charging points for electric vehicles were installed at Lorch train station in the P&R car park.

The construction and operation of the charging infrastructure for the P&R car park at Lorch train station was tendered in summer 2022 and awarded to chargeBIG. In the course of the project, 26 single-phase charging points with a charging capacity of max. 7.2kW and two three-phase fast charging points with a charging capacity of maximum 22kW were established. Since the P&R parking lot is mainly used by commuters and the electric vehicles are therefore standing for a long time, a blocking fee for ad-hoc charging was deliberately avoided. The project was implemented with the support of the BMDV program “Ladeinfrastruktur vor Ort”. Thus, the city of Lorch was able to cover 80% of the investment with the subsidy.

On February 24th at 2 pm, the opening ceremony took place at Lorch train station. After an official welcome by the mayor Marita Funk, our founder Sebastian Ewert gave insights into the concept of chargeBIG and the advantages of the charging infrastructure. He then demonstrated with a live demo how the charging process can be carried out successfully. Among other things, he talked about how the chargeBIG app works and how easy it is to start a charging process.

A study by the Technical University of Munich as part of the “München Elektrisiert” research project confirms that our charging solution is ideally suited for the electrification of P&R parking spaces. The analysis was based on real usage data. The data basis for this was provided by operating data from Park & Ride car parks and billing data from public charging processes. The study shows that MAHLE chargeBIG as a low power approach (named AC18x7kW in the publication) scores both economically and technologically convincingly. For example, despite the comparatively lower charging capacity of chargeBIG, more than 95% of the required energy was transmitted. The entire study can be downloaded via the button below.

The chargeBIG charging solution relies on charging capacities between 2 – 7kW to charge many vehicles at one location in parallel. Through dynamic and phase-specific load management, the available total power is distributed in a grid-supportive and intelligent manner. Therefore, chargeBIG is the ideal charging solution for parking areas on which many electric vehicles stand for a longer period of time, such as at airports or trade fairs, in company car parks, on the premises of fleet operators, in hubs of city logistics, in the housing industry or in large public car parks.