Kempower is a vendor of DC fast charging stations that are in use all over the world. It mostly operates in Europe, but its hardware has reached our shores. Their charger has some advantages when siting large charging-parks with many stalls. While travelling in Europe I recently visited a Kempower charging station, overall it worked quite well, and I appreciated the web-enabled charging stats, handy since there was a decent cafe nearby, and I did not need to download another app to keep an eye on the session.
There were 8 charging stalls in all, organized in pairs around a payment post. I was driving the Toyota BZ4X with a CCS2 fast charging connector which is standard in Europe. I was particularly glad to see a lone Chademo connector which was nicely integrated into the station.
The charging station was actually a part of a gas station, and I was able to use the RFID for payment that actually had been originally obtained for gas. Nice. We used the middle payment post of our pair 3, to authenticate, then plugged in. Charging started relatively quickly, after some pre-charging tests. It was a cold day, and as the BZ4X is not the best fast charger out there (source), charging speeds were slow. The charging post did point out it was the car’s fault, as the station could support more. A look at our neighbouring car confirmed this, as they managed 100 kW.
I really liked a QR code on the charging post, which allowed me to monitor the charging session via the web. This was helpful, as normally you need the charging provider app to get this information, which is helpful for a slow-fast-charging car like the BZ4X where you might be tempted to enjoy some local refreshments.
Electric car adventures 