Bechtle, Kreor, and The Mobility House are building one of Germany’s largest charging parks for electric company cars

The IT company Bechtle has set up one of Germany’s largest charging parks for company cars at one of its company sites: up to 140 electric cars can now be charged simultaneously at the head office in Neckarsulm. The technology company The Mobility House is providing suitable intelligent charging infrastructure for the new charging points (up to 78) and, with the Charging and Energy Management system ChargePilot®, it is ensuring that the numerous charging processes are incorporated into the existing energy landscape efficiently and inexpensively.

ChargePilot® performs the monitoring, surveillance, evaluation, and dynamic load management of the electric car charging points that are located in the employee parking garage at Bechtle Platz 1 in Neckarsulm. Depending on power availability, the electric cars charge particularly quickly with up to 22 kW or—whenever major consumers are started up, such as stoves and ovens in the company restaurant or the air-conditioning system in summer—briefly at a slightly slower speed or in sequential phases. The system receives the information from the site’s existing energy management system via an open interface.

All new charging stations already meet the Federal Government’s requirements for subsidies, and they are also in accordance with calibration laws and thus already prepared for billing of the charging processes for external users. A billing module can be added at any later date as desired by the customer in a hardware-agnostic way, as can other modules and charging stations.

With the number of charging points now totaling 140, Bechtle is increasing the electric charging infrastructure at the Neckarsulm site to more than double. The next steps have already been planned. They show that Germany’s largest system house is taking the expansion of electric mobility seriously.

At all sites where implementation is possible, charging infrastructure from The Mobility House will be used along with ChargePilot® and the dynamic load management. Further charging points are also planned at sites in Austria and Switzerland. 

This will make it possible to charge the constantly growing fleet of electric cars reliably and inexpensively. By the end of 2020, approximately 15% of the roughly 3,600 company cars in Germany will be electrified, as either plug-in hybrids or purely electric vehicles. Bechtle is thus exceeding the target set in the 2019 sustainability report of 10%. The new Volkswagen ID.3 (which is set to launch a new era for VW, following in the footsteps of the Beetle and the Golf) in particular will be a more common sight at Bechtle. A total of 50 ID.3s have been added to the company car fleet. The Mobility House is also collaborating with Volkswagen and the VW subsidiary Elli.

The project management is performed by the planning office Kreor Südwest, a company that Bechtle has already been working with for years.