Well I wrote a reply to miimura, but it said waiting for moderation, then it never appeared.
Anyway, pvh, that sounds interesting and I guess you will have cornered the market with that charger since it seems you'll be the only one selling an AC only 43kW charger :tongue: Not to sound like I'm critizing, but I saw that a 22kW charger can be had for about 600 euros. Why is your 43kW 3x that price? Is it because it's on a pedestal, vandal proof etc.? I hope it will besides the RFID crap (I hate plastic cards, this is such an obsolete thing already), also have the ability for NFC and paying by your mobile phone. Either via the NFC or SMS messaging.
I admire your goals and what you're saying makes sense for Zoe drivers.
As I wrote in my reply that didn't appear, I think unfortunately it would have made sense for all affordable electric cars, not only for the Zoe, that will have less than 40-50kW or so of batteries in the next 10 years. And even after that, 43kW charging speed will hardly be considered obsolete. I'm just left really wondering what Renaults marketing is doing. They should have really pushed the point in the beginning that they have a technology which enables a charging network to be built, that is about 15-20x cheaper than DC and for the same charging speed. That is a pretty tremendous thing but Renault didn't use this angle at all, especially starting in France where Zoes I think represent about 40-50% of EVs. They could have easily starting partnerships with chains of cafes, restaurants etc, sharing the costs and it would have been a terrific selling point: "Look, you spend 1000, we spend 1000 and you can have this fast charger installed - good for your business and good for ours."
Imagine if this would have happened - and Zoe drivers would have had fast chargers every 100km or less. I think Leaf/i3,i-MiEV etc. owners would have put some pressure on their companies saying - look why don't you do what Renault is doing? Why don't you use their tech, we want our fast chargers and they can do it, why can't you???
But what does Renault do instead? They install 22kW chargers at their dealers locations. And that's all they have done so far. Not even a cooperation with IKEA or Auchan like Nissan has done, even though their costs are at least 15x higher for every charger installed. The dealers are of course are not open 24/7, closed the weekends, and you have the hassle of always having to ask somebody there for the RFID card. Either Renault really, really sucks at marketing, or this great opportunity was forgotten on purpose.