Hyundai & Kia set up European charging service with DCS
The European offices of Hyundai and Kia, together with Digital Charging Solutions (DCS) are launching a new charging service for electric car drivers under the labels Charge myHyundai and KiaCharge. The service will be rolled out across various markets in Europe.
Kia will introduce KiaCharge in seven countries this autumn, starting with Italy, Poland and Spain, followed by Austria, France, Germany and Switzerland. UK customers may expect the charging service to come active in the fourth quarter of 2020. Kia says they plan to extend the scheme to customers in more countries shortly.
Hyundai has also replied to electrive’s request for information, where the European headquarters will drive the cooperation with DCS. The company expects the service to launch in six countries, namely France, Switzerland, Norway, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic this autumn. The individual sales organisations in Europe are apparently free to use this base. Germany, for example, won’t join the new offer as Hyundai runs successful cooperation with EnBW there.
Once activated, the new charge services will give customers access to more than 160,000 charging points through Digital Charging Solutions. DCS emphasizes this was Europe’s largest charging network “with quality assured POI data”. Markus Bartenschlager, Managing Director of DCS, had explained their USP in an interview with our German-speaking service earlier this year: “Some CPOs provide data quality that does not meet our standards at DCS”, Bartenschlager said. “For example, we are interested in what charging capacity an installed column really offers and not what is stated in any datasheet. It is a complex task to record this value uniformly and reliably with a large number of charging point manufacturers, operators and roaming partners. However, this real charging performance is an important factor for intelligent route planning.”
Said smart navigation would happen via iOs or Android app in the electric vehicles of Hyundai and Kia. These apps also allow starting the charging process from inside the vehicle and via voice assistant, so even while driving.
DCS gives customers access to more than 500 charging station operators with authentication. Payment comes via one monthly invoice. However, the companies have yet to publish details on conditions for the Charge myHyundai and KiaCharge services.
DCS was founded in 2017 as a wholly-owned BMW subsidiary, and Daimler also holds half the shares since the merger of their mobility services with BMW.
Still, DCS was designed as a white-label solution from the start to be active beyond its shareholders. Apart from the new cooperation with Hyundai and Kia, they and also operate the charging service on behalf of Audi and most recently FCA. Earlier this year, Digital Charging Solutions launched a UK-wide solution with partner OEMs to enable access to stations from over fifteen domestic providers such as Podpoint, Source London, or Ionity.
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