Dutch government to build electric-car chargers within 50km of each citizen

New nationwide scheme set to be completed by 2015 follows a similar initiative in Estonia

Aiming to dramatically boost support infrastructure for electric cars, the Dutch government has announced plans to build fast-charging stations within 50km of each of the country’s 16.7 million inhabitants.

Aiming to dramatically boost support infrastructure for electric cars, the Dutch government has announced plans to build fast-charging stations within 50km of each of the country’s 16.7 million inhabitants.

The news was announced by the Swiss ABB Group, who won the contract to supply the chargers. The stations will come equipped with several different standards so that they can serve all major car brands from Europe, the US and Asia.

ABB say its 50 kilowatt Terra chargers can fully charge a car in 15 to 30 minutes, and that their stations will come with their own cloud-connected service to provide easy payments, remote assistance and usage statistics.

This won’t be the first nationwide scheme to provide a network of fast-chargers: ABB launched a similar initiative in Estonia in February, creating a network of 165 stations each no further than 60km from the last.

The Dutch scheme will be slightly larger – with over 200 stations set across the country, even though the Netherlands is about 4,000km smaller than Estonia. Those considering the viability of such a scheme in the UK should remember that England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined are more than five times the size of the Netherlands.

Construction of the Dutch scheme is expected to be completed by 2015.