The electrical paradox is found in Affi, a town in the Verona area with less than 3,000 inhabitants. It is here that Ionity, the German-powered joint venture that invests in the creation of the fast charging network, has built and just inaugurated its largest energy filling station in Europe. That is, in the country, Italy, which has one of the lowest shares of electrified cars in the Old Continent: in April, for example, BEVs alone were worth just over 3% of the market (over 14% in Germany).
But the Affi shopping center where the structure was built is not just any place. First of all because it is located at the Brennero exit of the A22, which tourists take to go to Lake Garda or to “cut” towards Peschiera and slip onto the A4, the Milan-Venice, to reach other locations. The consortium speaks of a “strategic crossroads between continental Europe, the lakes of Northern Italy and the major holiday resorts of the South”. During the survey carried out at Easter, the Affi station was the twenty-fifth among the 500 of the consortium in the Old Continent for the number of fillings carried out: «An extremely significant figure, which places it just below the busiest stations in the countries from Scandinavia and the United Kingdom», explained Elena Airoldi, Ionity manager for Italy. And then because Affi was the first municipality in Italy to have achieved the objectives of the plan envisaged by the Kyoto Protocol, among other things by opening the first 1 MW photovoltaic park inserted in a road roundabout and installing two wind turbines of 2 MW each : the current mayor, Marco Giacomo Sega, has not surprisingly praised the foresight of his predecessors.
The Affi plant boasts 18 ultrafast columns, i.e. up to 350 kW. Not only that: the entire station supplies exclusively certified renewable energy, partly coming from the same 75 kWp photovoltaic shelter that protects the structure.
With that of Affi, Ionity has brought the number of filling stations in the Belapese area to 28 for a total of 172 high-power recharging points. Other 9 areas are under construction: for three of these the works started last week. While referring to some manufacturers (the partners are the BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Hyundai and Ford groups), battery-powered vehicles of all brands can refuel at the Ionity recharging network. Although he did not personally intervene at the ribbon cutting, Luca Zaia, the president of the Veneto Region, did not want to give up his support. «I express my greatest applause for the wide-ranging synergies which, by making the public and the private sector dialogue profitably, enrich our territories with a continental primacy which, in addition to making the whole of Veneto proud, enrich our Region with a tangible national benchmark », he said in a note.
In Europe, Ionity already has around 460 stations for a total of over 2,100 charging stations (should become 7,000 by 2025) spread across 24 countries.
