The joint project of various well-known car makers speedily approaches its aim to establish a European fast charging network. And the quality is right too – most of the times.

BMW, Ford, Merce­des-Benz and Volkswagen with its brands Audi and ­Porsche – the list of founders of ­Ionity looks like a Who is who of the auto­motive sector. Their ­mission: building a Europe-wide network of High Power Charging stations.

By the end of 2020, the network is supposed to span 18 countries, with a distance of no more than 120 kilometers between any two stations.

Our tests confirm that the com­pany can be proud of the already existing offerings –
al­though there is room for ­improvement in some details such as roofing or the marking of parking spots which are reserved exclusively for charging.  Also when it comes to payment options, Ionity could put its ­offerings up a notch. But all ­in all, the service is ­con­vincing already today.

EnBW

Regarding the number of High Power Charging points, the Baden-Wuerttemberg utility company makes the second place in our comparison. Overall, the charging experience looks good as well.

As already mentioned in the “E-Mobility Providers“ category, the Baden-Wuerttemberg-based utility company operates a dense network of charging stations primarily in its own federal state – including 194 High Power Char­ging Points at the time of writing.

The locations that were considered in our tests could offer ­somewhat better signage, and a roofing would be welcome too. But when it comes to usability and functionalilty of the charging stations, EnBW gathers a lot of points. The stations‘ displays provide a multitude of useful information during charging as well. The service is right too, and the pricing information leaves equally no cause for complaint.

What we still would find nice, would be a somewhat wider choice of payment options and overall a ­little ­more ­convenience around the actual charging process.

E-Wald

You have to look hard for the charging stations of this Bavarian provider, which are often hidden in industrial parks. The testers also found room on the upside regarding usability and convenience.

The Provider who is based in Teisnach, near the Bavarian  Deggendorf has offerings from carsharing all the way up to charging networks and thus also offers a considerable amount of charging stations.

However, the three locations on our test routes were hiden in industral parks without any signage worth mentioning – devoid of satnav support, the testers would ­have barely found them. And the distances to the next restaurant, shop or rest­room might be a little shorter too – furthermore, many of them only offer limited opening hours.

When it comes to the station‘s operation, we have nothing to criticize. However, the display contents could be a little more informative. When we called E-Wald‘s hotline, Deutsche Bahn‘s carsharing service Flinkster took the call – but was able to help competently.

Fastned

Green electricity, pleasantly designed locations and a competent hotline earn this dutch ­provider the sympathy vote. But there are also some aspects to critizise. 

The dutch company aims at building a network of 1000 fast charging stations in Europe, which runs completely on renewable energy. At the time of testing, 15 stations with 28 charge points were available in Germany, suppor­ting wattages of 150 kW or more.

Illumination and roofing made a good impression, regarding signage and marking the parking spots, Fastned might still up the ante a little bit. It was not possible to use the stations with the EMP apps which we had intended to use in our tests – before being able to start charging, the testers had to install Fastned‘s own app.

However, we found the operation of the charging stations compelling – although here too, some more informa­tion during charging would be nice. The hotline deserves kudos, but ad-hoc charging left some room for improvement.

Allego

All locations which the testers headed for were well hidden – and some of them did not even work when they had arrived there. This may be bad luck – but also leaves room for improvement.

Allego, which is also based in the Netherlands, builds a charging network with nume­rous stations in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.  This includes the proud number of 126 High Power Charging points in Germany – which makes Allego rank third in this discipline behind Ionity and EnBW in our competition.

However, the testers could not issue top grades for signage, illumination or roofing for the considered charging points. Above that, it would have ­been hard to find the locations with­out satnav support – and ­many of them just did no work during the test stops. Additional shortcomings were identified in the areas of usability and price communication. ­

Al­though its phone number was barely readable on the stations, the hotline made an overall good impression.

E.ON

Thanks to the merger of E.ON with Innogy, this provider can now offer a big charging network. However, as we were only able to test one of its locations, this company takes part as an unofficial competitor.

The Essen-based utility company got involved in the area of e-mobilty early. In March 2020, it absorbed its competitor Innogy – including Innogy‘s charging network. The now impressive ­offering thus spans 71 High ­Power Char­ging Points. How­ever, at the time of preparing our test, we were only able to find one HPC location which came into consideration. This is why we included E.ON as an unofficial competitor in our comparison this time.

When it comes to the features and the surroudings of the considered station, we have only minor sugges­tions for improvement. Especially the operation and use of the station was convincing – only the information displayed before and during charging might be more detailed. Also, we would like to see some ­additional payment options.