Audi’s Swanky Charging Hub Is A First Class Lounge For Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicle charging stations aren’t terribly exciting as many of them are simply a handful of chargers located at the back of a parking lot.

Audi is turning that idea on its head with their swanky new charging hub project. Instead of visiting a desolate parking lot, EV owners are treated to a premium charging experience that is similar to airport lounges.

Originally announced earlier this year, the first charging hub is located in Nuremberg and will open to customers on December 23rd. It’s an early Christmas present to residents of the German city as EV owners can reserve one of the six chargers through the myAudi app. Once owners arrive, they plug in their vehicle and can visit the lounge upstairs.

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The lounge spans approximately 2,153 square feet (200 square meters) and features an open design as well as numerous seating areas, where visitors can relax or work while their vehicle charges. They can also hang out on the patio or play around with a massive 98 inch display that can be used to show vehicle charging information, details about the charging hub, or an Audi configurator.

If that wasn’t enough to keep you occupied, you can grab a bite to eat at the automat or use the station’s “just-in-time” food delivery service. The hub also has an exchange station for electric bike batteries, an electric scooter lending service, and supervised test drives in the Q4 e-tron and RS e-tron GT.

Putting the lounge aside, the charging hub is constructed out of “flexible container cubes” that allow stations to be assembled and disassembled in a matter of days. The station also uses ‘second-life’ batteries from dismantled development vehicles and this eliminates the need for high-voltage power lines and expensive transformers as the batteries “bring quick-charging infrastructure where the electric grid is not enough.”

As Audi explained, the charging hub has an interim storage capacity of 2.45 MWh and this means the station only needs a relatively modest 200 kW connection to the grid. This is “enough to continually fill the storage modules” and solar panels on the roof help to contribute up to 30 kW of green energy. Audi went on to say approximately 80 vehicles can be charged per day, without exceeding the power limits of the hub.

Speaking of charging, visitors with an e-tron Charging Service contract can charge for 31 cents per kilowatt hour. Audi says that’s similar to what it would cost using a wallbox at home.

That’s notable as the charging hub has been designed for people who can’t charge at home either because they live in an apartment or otherwise don’t have access to a charging port. As charging hub project manager Ralph Hollmig explained, “We’re going where our customers don’t necessarily wake up in the morning with a fully charged electric car and at the same time thinking about increasing charging demand in the future.”