Fastned Got 30,000 Extra Potential Customers In Q4 2019
Credit to Author: Maarten Vinkhuyzen| Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 04:50:48 +0000
Published on February 15th, 2020 | by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
February 15th, 2020 by Maarten Vinkhuyzen
Fastned highway station, courtesy Fastned.
It is a luxury problem every company likes to have — the customer base of Dutch charging provider Fastned grew by 30% or 30,000 drivers in Q4 2019. Luckily, the Fastned network was never sized to facilitate existing demand. It was built to create and service future demand. Fastned absolutely contributed to the growth of the Dutch plug-in vehicle fleet. Travelers see on many highway rest stops the recognizable yellow Fastned stations, telling drivers not only that electric driving is for real, but also that there are nearly as many EV charging stations along the highways as there are gas stations.
I think the whole EV enthusiast world knows about the crazy Dutch end-of-incentive rush last quarter. That the end of incentives turned into a buying frenzy and that it did not get the reaction “Good that they ended that idiocy” is due to the awareness of the public.
You don’t see whether the Volkswagen Golf or Kia Niro in front of you has a tailpipe or only a battery inside. You don’t see that the charger at your local grocery store or in front of a greenish leftist in your street is one of tens of thousands like it in cities and villages across the Netherlands. You don’t see that every municipality has an office window where new electric vehicle (EV) owners can request a curbside charger near their home. What you do see is that those yellow fast-charge stations are everywhere along the highways.
Now, all of those new EV owners are going to use those stations, more often than they planned. First, there is a shortage of qualified installers to place the many extra home and curbside chargers that are required. And secondly, in the fresh weather we now have in the Netherlandsm with temperatures just above freezing, the advertised WLTP range drops by over 30%. When driving at the allowed max speed of 130 km/h (80 mph), it can drop over 50%. I knew that and even I ended up more often at a Fastned station than I planned. Many new drivers will be surprised by this.
Fastned Q4 2019 Growth
Naturally, we asked Fastned how it handled the influx of all those new customers. The answer was already obvious — this is what the charging stations were built for. There is no capacity problem. There are no structural issues with wait times, something that is in line with my own (too extensive) personal experience. While most deliveries were in late December, the influence of the rush was clearly visible in the Q4 report of Fastned. It must be far greater in this quarter. I can’t wait to read the Q1 2020 report.
Fastned is not hazed by the influx of new customers. It keeps doing what it is doing: Opening new stations to extend the network. Replacing older 50 kW chargers with the new 175 kW and 350 kW chargers. Extending service into more cities by opening city stations beside the highway stations that were installed for years.
City station, courtesy Fastned.
The visibility of Fastned chargers along Dutch highways (+100 stations) has been very important for the acceptance and growth of e-mobility in the Netherlands. Fastned is also expanding into Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and the UK. As a company, its goal is to get the same nationwide following in those countries as it has in the Netherlands. All EV advocates (who realize what I just described) hope Fastned will have the same influence it has had on the Dutch public.
The current locations abroad show the building of a widespread network. As a Dutch Fastned customer, my interest is in supporting my journeys just over the border. I imagine tens of thousands of other Dutch customers hope for the same. For us, the first priority for Fastned chargers abroad should be in getting us home after reaching our destination. A Fastned station when leaving Brussels and at the Belgium–France border could be a big help. A station on the west side of the German Rhine-Ruhr area would be highly appreciated by Dutch business travelers going to Europe’s largest metropolitan area. This would open a lot of destination for Dutch EV drivers.
After those very selfish goals, I wish Fastned luck with the expansion. If the January deliveries of plug-in vehicles in many European countries are an indication of what is coming, we need an extra 1,000 Fastned stations in Europe as soon as possible, starting in Belgium and the Ruhr-Rhine area. Both are wastelands from a charging infrastructure point of view, and have 25 million potential customers.
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Maarten Vinkhuyzen Grumpy old man. The best thing I did with my life was raising two kids. Only finished primary education, but when you don’t go to school, you have lots of time to read. I switched from accounting to software development and ended my career as system integrator and architect. My 2007 boss got two electric Lotus Elise cars to show policymakers the future direction of energy and transportation. And I have been looking to replace my diesel cars with electric vehicles ever since. And putting my money where my mouth is, I have bought Tesla shares. Intend to keep them until I can trade them for a Tesla car.