Tango (Q8) is joining the HPC infrastructure game!
Fast charging around Europe is about to get even more interesting!
[UPDATE] March 5, 2020. The station is alive! Original article below the picture. Waiting for Tango press release.
Here we go! (Picture by Buurauto).
The EV year 2020 started completely unlike 2019 before it. Back when Maingau and Telekom in Germany were competing for market share bringing prices down to amazing value. Especially where DC fast charging was concerned.
Now in 2020 with Ionity and the big January price hike announcement, it all started off on a very different note.
Fast forward to the end of February and what do we have here! A petrol giant (Q8) by way of Tango (unmanned ‘cheap’ petrol stations in NL) recently put up it’s first HPC charging site. And why do I think this is worthy of a blogpost? Couple of reasons.
Yes, take a look at Shell or even Total. (Have you clicked these links? Especially Total…) They have announced plans in the same direction. Q8 or Tango is definitely not the first one to the gate. Look at the station! It’s a brand new Tango station at a site with restaurants next door and so on.
Say hi to: Tango Electric
The webpage isn’t even live yet. But you can click the link anyway. (Or if you’re late to the party, this link might work by the time you’ve come across this article).
The ones of you that use Allego (or Innogy and so on) fast charging sites might know the chargers already. Made by Efacec you will see more and more of these appearing around Europe.
I especially like the integration. Just look at this station. Not hidden in a corner somewhere. No, a petrol station like any other, with High Power Chargers right next to the fuel! Yak! Haha yeah the smell will be for free. Hope for the discount!
Many questions
And little in the way of answers, for now. I contacted Q8 and when they’re ready, you will hear it here first. It looks like the regular payment cards Tango supports will be supported by the payment terminals on the machines. This is one of the reasons I wanted to write about the chargers. It may be the kickstart in The Netherlands for more payment modules directly installed on (fast) chargers. Making payments easier especially for people who don’t invest a life (yes hello here I am) into finding the best charging card for a certain HPC provider.
Look at the station on the Tango website. You will notice a discount of more than 10ct/l on petrol. Now that makes one wonder. Will they do a 10ct/kWh discount when compared to regular Fastned pricing? That could mean €0,49/kWh without the usage of a charging card like eins or Maingau.
Before the HPC’s were built (look left to see prepped spots). Source.
There are multiple ways to look at this. Telling the story to friends they noticed I was talking happily about a new petrol station. At least it’s one that has a way to incorporate the future right here, right now. IF you build a petrol station in 2020, please let it look like this. Who knows how many years it’ll take before the electrons take over the other pillars as well?
It seems there is more on the way
Reading this tankpro acticle (Dutch) it’s clear that at least one more station looking like the one above will be built soon in Deventer. Tango and Buurauto (shared electric vehicle) also seem to start working together which creates the extra green dimension needed to convince local authorities to choose for Tango/Q8.
Significance
Around The Netherlands Tango operates almost 200 stations. They have been steadily growing their network for almost twenty years now. (In April it’s the birthday party). If they think they can run High Power Chargers at a profit in this country this could mean rapid nationwide expansion. I asked around to find out if this was a single pilot or if more is coming and the question was left unanswered for now. Which inspires me to hope for many more chargers.
Pricing
Of course the million dollar question here, next to the speed of expansion of the network. What will Tango Electric do. Are they going to put themselves into the market like they do with petrol? Will there be a day of the week (Wednesday/Saturday/Sunday) for cheaper kWh’s? Hopefully we find out soon, of course it will be in my newsletter!
Speaking of price, did you check out my Ionity pricing page?
Will Tango Electric launch a charging card? An app with discounted charging? Hope to be able to tell you more soon!
Q8
As mother company of Tango (NL) they are not new to the fast charging game at all. Already back in 2016 the first steps towards electrification were made. Luminus helped me together with some friends to drive an i3 to Paris back in 2018. Last year Ionity placed some very strategically located chargers in Belgium also ‘thanks to’ Q8.
Chargemap
Especially when traveling electric around France one can’t live without this app. Now that the Tango Electric network is added, let’s see if the expansion starts to show on the map this year.
Belgium
What about Q8 Easy. The Belgian version of Tango so to speak. Below a map. Especially close to Luxemburg HPC’s are still sort of unknown. It would be amazing if these stations receive a fresh supply of High Power Chargers!
All images thanks to DJSmiley and Google Maps.
Of course you can already find the charger on Chargemap, thanks to LedsDoItNow.