Chargery is located in the centre of the German start-up scene. The young company uses a shop in Berlin-Mitte as both an office and a workshop. The three founders want to bring electricity to electric cars with a simple solution. We introduce you to the start-up and show you how the solution for mobile charging stations works.
Chargery: A DELIVERY SERVICE FOR ELECTRIC CARS
The basic idea of the founding trio of Chargery: If it is too difficult to bring the electric car to the charging station, we will bring the charging station to the electric car. Because sometimes there are either too few charging stations available, free or in the immediate vicinity. That's why the young men founded the start-up in 2017 with the goal of operating sustainable and emission-free mobile charging stations.
So far, the company has mainly been a service provider for car sharing providers in Berlin. The focus is primarily on urban areas and a solution that supports the efficient operation of fleets with electric vehicles. A simple and impressive idea, but its technical implementation was not easy at the beginning. First of all, it was necessary to find a quick and feasible way to realise the "mobile charging station".
FROM THE LOADING ROBOT TO THE BICYCLE TRAILER
It is part of the history of many start-ups that the founders themselves were affected by a concrete problem, the solution to which subsequently developed into the core of the young company. This was also the case with Chargery: Christian Lang regularly had to walk 15 minutes to the nearest charging station. So he quickly asked himself why "the car has to come to the electricity" - and not the other way round. He and his two co-founders Philipp Anders and Dr Paul Stuke embarked on a long development path in search of the best solution that could be implemented as quickly as possible. At the beginning of the process, there was the idea of an autonomously driving robot that inductively charges the electric car it drives. However, this was not practical, and there were also all kinds of legal hurdles. Finally, the idea of a bicycle with a trailer came into play - a construct that is ideally suited for large cities like Berlin.
HOW AN E-BIKE AND A BICYCLE TRAILER MERGE INTO A MOBILE CHARGING STATION
Each bicycle trailer contains 12 or 18 mobile battery packs with a total capacity of 20 or 35 kWh. It takes just under four hours to fully charge an electric car with the AC charger and just under one hour with the DC charger.
An example: The Renault ZOE small car is already available with a 22 kWh battery. The DC Charger from Chargery provides a power of 30 kW. Put simply, this means it can fully charge a battery with a capacity of 30 kWh in one hour. The Renault ZOE is therefore ready to go again in less than an hour.
After each use, the empty batteries are replaced and recharged at the headquarters. For this, the company relies on green electricity and battery cells from GreenPack - another Berlin start-up. The company develops standardised portable exchangeable batteries that are used in cargo bikes, for example.
Each bicycle trailer can supply up to four electric cars a day thanks to its modular design and is quickly ready for use again. A courier pulls the 200-kilogram bicycle trailer by e-bike and brings it to the nearest electric car. On site, it is parked on the footpath and functions like a typical charging station: plug in the cable and charge the electric car. During the charging process, the driver can take advantage of other services: Interior and exterior cleaning or replenishment of consumables are among them.
BERLIN SHOULD ONLY BE THE BEGINNING
At the moment, Chargery operates eight mobile charging stations. So far, they are exclusively on the road in Berlin and are used a total of per day. In addition to expanding to other cities, the Berlin start-up is also planning to open up to private customers. An important prerequisite for this is the ability to open the car via smartphone. This allows Chargery to charge the vehicle without the driver having to be on site. Only when this is also possible for private electric cars will private customers be able to use the service. Because so far, the clients are mainly car sharing providers and car manufacturers.
Chargery still has an exciting remaining year ahead of it. On the one hand, the start-up is continuously working on optimising the system and expanding the business in other cities. On the other hand, new partnerships with other companies are emerging all the time. And last but not least, there are strong investments to be made - in the start-up with the simple idea of bringing electricity to the electric car.
