Photo: Herbert Diess/LinkedIn
CEO of Volkswagen Group Herbert Diess expressed a negative opinion about the IONITY charger network. While on vacation, he had a bad experience with the company's charging stations, which underscores the key benefits of Tesla's Supercharging Network, which conveniently paves the way for travel across Europe.
IONITY is a high-power charging station network for electric vehicles, which was intended to facilitate long-distance travel across Europe. It's a joint venture founded by the BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen Group, but in November 2020 Hyundai Motor Group also joined them. But ironically, that CEO of VW Group, having gained experience with his ID.3, came to the conclusion that IONITY in Europe was poorly functioning.
Diess recently shared his experience with IONITY charging stations via LinkedIn. He toured Europe this summer in VW ID.3, which required charging stations along the entire route. Diess said, that during his journey through the Brenner Pass, the main road that runs through the Alps and connects Italy with Austria, he could not find a working charging station. “Too few charging stations,” Diess wrote in a comment. He clarified that there were only four stations along the 22-mile mountain pass, one of which caused long waiting times due to the high volume of traffic in the summer.
Beyond that, Diess also described the state of the IONITY charging station in the northern Italian city of Trento, which lacked a toilet and basic amenities like coffee—something Tesla's Superchargers offer. He also said that the location has several faulty charging points. As a conclusion, he wrote: "Das ist alles andere als ein Premium-Ladeerlebnis, IONITY!" which literally means "This is anything but a premium charging experience, IONITY!"
Tesla has twice as many charging stations in Europe as IONITY and the quality of their service is significantly higher. Tesla is very thoughtful about high-level service and carefully chooses where to place its Superchargers to make them as accessible and user-friendly as possible. This is one of the company’s main competitive advantages.
© 2021, Eva Fox. All rights reserved.
_____________________________
We appreciate your readership! Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
