This German EV Charging Mega Hub Should Have Been The Future! What Happened???
[Music] going to show you how to get plugged in here at the Sortimo Innovation Park. It’s a bit um weird. I’ve been here before, but I’ve actually never filmed it. So, you unplug the connector, you plug the car in. So, we’re S 81 and as you see, super futuristic here. We actually have to go inside now to start the charge. As crazy as it sounds, but this was a site that kind of got me into EVs in general. It’s this place right here. I watched a video on it and it showed us that EVs could be cool and futuristic. I mean, that’s the future we were kind of promised. So, we’ll go inside. And we’ll actually start the charging here. So you go here. You go to there. We’ll switch it to English to show you. Now we are at S81. Car is connected and the car. So what it does is that it ramps up a bit of power and you go to connect. We’ll go to next. No, we’re not going to do that. And I’ll get my phone out. And we’ll use the card to pay. And that doesn’t work. We’ll have to retry payment. No internet connection. Wow, that’s great. We got the car charging up. It’s a bit of a painful process charging here. So, I plugged in, put in the number as you saw, and it said dropped internet connection, and then the car started charging up. So, I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve been to this site before, and I’ll be honest with you, it’s the site that got me into into electric cars, but also at the same time, I don’t feel it’s as good as it used to be simply because that payment terminal is such a stupid idea. But, let’s give you the full sight tour here. I’ll switch the camera around. And we’ve actually never filmed this site on the channel, but you may have seen it elsewhere. So, we have four handles per mushroom, let’s just call it. Uh, so you could charge four cars for eight. You could charge another four. So, you could charge up to 16 cars here. There’s some buses that are charging as well. Huge Tesla Supercharger. All of these do these do 35 kilowatts at 45 cents a kilowatt hour. So if you’re just stopping here for a bit, again, these are Huber Schuner cables and it just goes on like this. And I always thought this was going to be kind of the uh flagship site for EV charging for an example. But I just don’t feel that it it really it really caught on and it’s kind of looking a bit, you know, it look kind of looks like it’s falling apart. There’s a lot of broken connectors. We have those buses charging up. I’ll take you over to the Neo Swap station. And this place just goes on and on and on. We have even more charging up over here. We have a Neo ET7. Although I’m told Neo is not too is not selling quite well in Europe at the moment. But this site here a few years ago, like I think four years ago, this was the big flagship site in Germany that Sortimo built. They’re a uh industrial supplier of sorts. Neo ET7. We have the battery swap box up here that’s humming. Never seen one being used, but it does look like somebody has been here recently because there is paint missing and it looks a bit wet. It looks like someone has driven in. But this site is just absolutely massive. All your power equipment is in the shed back there. But this battery swapping stuff, I’ve never seen one of these being used, and we’ve seen a lot of them on the channel. Does anybody actually use these here in Europe with their Neos? Can you please tell me if people do if you watch this video? And again, we’re just off Autobond 8, kind of between Sutkart and Munich. And you have just a whole bunch of EV charging here. Again, it was an interesting concept when they first opened to have the the plugs coming down and you go and pay inside to charge. You got the buses here to we’ll go over this way. We’ll go check on the uh Lucid, whatever it is it’s doing. But again, version three Tesla superchargers. And in Europe, the way that you can tell that they’re version three is they don’t have the type two connector. You just have the CCS 2 connector with a nice thin cables on it. And we’ll come back across this way. Yeah, it’s just not looking as good as it used to. It’s a cool site, don’t get me wrong. The concept the concept is right, but it’s just kind of looking a bit knackered between you and I. And this is the site. Hold on, I’ll turn the camera around. This is the site that got me into charging. I remember I watched a video here about how when they had opened up, they really wanted to make this a um EV charging hub and and they have. But the past few times I’ve been here, there’s been problems at the restaurant inside. There’s been problems uh with cleanliness in the washrooms. As you see here, it’s kind of dirty and messy. So, I’m not too sure what’s going on. That was at what was supposed to be the uh EV charging hub of the future. But I digress. This was a site that got me into it. I’m like, if you build sites like this, people will buy electric cars. And we do see sites like this now in such a short period of time. We got our Mini in 2022 and that’s when I really started following the EV scene. So 3 years ago uh you have chargers here to charge up your uh ebikes and you have more 35 kW or sorry 45 kW charging over here. You have your bakery lounge inside. I don’t think we’ll need to go in there and have a look. But there’s just so much going on here and I really thought more places like this would take off, but everybody seems to have done their own their own way of EV charging, which is which is fine. I get it. It’s understandable. Let’s go have a look at what is doing. So, just to point out what I’m talking about, these two handles are and duct taped. And I think there’s a couple more up there that are broken and duct taped. So yeah. Well, yeah, th those ones are definitely broken. You have two broken con connectors there. Oh, it’s such a shame because it’s such a nice site and I really want to show you it, but I’ve always said on this channel, I’ll point out the truth. Actually, you got three broken handles there. So, you only have one one working. These ones here are all online. Oh, what a shame. What a shame. It’s driving me crazy, actually. But hey, at least Balooa looks cool underneath. I mean, this is what we were kind of promised. This futuristic EV charging stalls with very futuristic looking cars. And I mean, well, we got the cars right and we got the charging for the most part correct. I just wish uh site operators would take care of their equipment more because there is a considerable amount of money that’s been invested here over over time. I mean, just the taxes on this place alone must be crazy. Just building it, the amount of money that got spent in here building it and to not to have it running at 100% kind of doesn’t make really any sense to me. You want your business operating at 100% at peak efficiency all the time. And when you roll in and half your connectors are broken, that’s not operating at at 100%. We’ll go to 113 kW and we’ve added uh I think we’ve added about 20% 25% state of charge. Just that indoor payment terminal is so strange because I wanted to film the whole process, but then it said internet connection was dropped. So, I figured uh I’ll go back outside, unplug, replplug back in. But when we got here, the car was already charging. So, and it build my credit card €49 hold. Uh I’m excited to be here, but at the same time too, I can I almost get the feeling that if I come back when we come back in spring or next year, it’s possibly going to get even worse. Just judging by the general feeling I’m getting here. Um, this is one of those things that was probably a great idea. Don’t get me wrong. This was a great idea, an awesome idea. They actually implemented it. This just didn’t stay a paper charging site, but they actually implemented it properly. It’s just the upkeep hasn’t been amazing. Does anybody know why the upkeep has not been amazing here? I mean, this is the most handles I’ve seen down in 5,000 km of driving. And we’ve been through Germany. We’ve been through Denmark. We’ve been through Sweden. We’ve been through Norway and back through again. I mean, we’ve been literally across Germany. And we’ve been across Denmark. And this this is the most equipment I’ve seen down at at a site. And coming here 3 years into our Eevee adventure to see basically your hero your hero worship site to see it bleeding like this is uh well, it kind of makes me a bit sad. Actually, I would doesn’t make me upset. It just makes me sad that again you put so much money and effort into here and it’s just dirty. It’s drab. It’s dirty. Um like I almost don’t want to come back and charge here. I would much rather go to the ionity site 60 km away and and we have before. We have before. We’ve been here in spring and Laura was asking she’s like are you going to stop at Sortimo? And I’m like no that place last time I mean there were like flies coming out of the washroom. But again, I think we had enough charge here. We’ll get the Lucid unplugged. We’ll head back on the road to a Munich. How long we’ve been here? I don’t even know how long we’ve been here, but I think we’re good to get to a Munich, definitely. And that’s going to be it. We’ll unplug the connector. I mean, I think this has been changed recently. That looks relatively newish. What are these on here? These are 500 amps. So, 400 kW 500 amps. They they didn’t especially back when they built this place. That was a big deal to have that much power. Um this is how you load up the apps and stuff and you go pay inside. I mean it’s not a bad idea. It’s just when it crashed on me, it was very confusing what to do. Uh and only open during hours. Well, that’s the other thing. If you’re coming here, you don’t have the app. Sorry, it’s 300 kW, not 400. But even then, when when they built it, that was a big deal. Uh yeah, if you can’t charge after hours, what’s the point of having this place? Hold on, I’ll turn the camera again. Yeah, if you’re if you can’t charge after hours and you have to download an app, what’s really the point of being open 24 hours a day if you need if you need the app, considering most other charging sites now, yes, they’re app based and subscription, but that’s normal. But you can roll up and just tap your card and it will work. Pretty much everywhere we’ve gone, you can pay with a credit card. It’s just here. Once it’s closed, it’s closed. Like you can’t you you can’t charge. So you they really want you downloading the app. I think that’s going to be it from here from Sortimo. I’m a bit disappointed. Uh I’m a bit disappointed what’s happened here. Like there’s all dirt and cobwebs everywhere. It’s just so It’s just so sad to see a hero site like this bleeding uh or if there’s wrinkles in its armor. But hey, we got the the the electric buses pulling out. It’s still a cool site. Hopefully, they can get it together and make it what it used to be. Again, thank you for watching and we shall see you in the next video. And that’s going to be bye for now from the Sortimo Innovations Park in Zusmar House in Germany. See you in the next video.
You join Greg at the Sortimo Innovationspark in Zusmarshausen, Germany. This mega EV Charging hub is where I got the idea for the channel in 2022 from but in recent times this Charging Hub has been going downhill. Let’s take a look at what should have been the future of EV Charging!
Chapters-
0:00 Intro
0:09 Plugging In And Paying
1:43 Site Tour
3:39 NIO Battery Swap
5:30 Channel Origins
7:07 Endless Broken Equipment
8:42 Stupid Payment System
9:25 Thoughts On This Site Going Downhill
10:55 Unplugging And Final Thoughts
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