Lexus cooperates with DCS on new charging service
Digital Charging Solutions (DCS) and Lexus Europe are launching a new charging service for Lexus drivers under the label “Lexus Charging Network”. The service is available in Norway, Switzerland, Portugal, Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain and Italy.
The charging service will give users access to over 85,000 charging points. Digital Charging Solutions said that the prerequisite for use is an RFID card and a contract for all participating charging station operators. Payment will then be made in a single monthly invoice. According to the company, plans are already underway to extend the service to the eight countries mentioned. Digital Charging Solutions is also a partner of the charging services ‘Charge myHyundai’ and ‘KiaCharge’, launched at the end of September.
DCS emphasises in the announcement that this is Europe’s largest store network “with quality-assured POI data”. The challenge with data quality was explained by Markus Bartenschlager, Managing Director of DCS, in an interview with our German colleagues at electrive.net at the beginning of the year. “Some CPOs provide data quality that does not meet our standards at DCS”, says Bartenschlager. “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”.
The Lexus Charging Network charging service includes, among other things, a website provided by DCS, which brings together product information, tariffs, a map of charging stations and account and contract management. Users have a wide range of functions at their disposal, such as a charging station search filtered by connector type or real-time information on the occupancy status of charging stations. The app for the service (Lexus Link) is contributed by Lexus. The only difference is that the message from DCS does not mention any conditions for Lexus Charging Network. Time will tell how attractive the charging service actually is.
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 and now Lexus, they also operate the charging service on behalf of Audi and FCA. Earlier this year, Digital Charging Solutions also 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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