Travelling across the Czech Republic by electric car keeps getting easier, among other things thanks to the expanding offering of public charging stands operated by the energy company ČEZ.
The country’s largest network is comparable to larger chains of traditional petrol stations. The jubilee 300th stand, which was erected at the parking lot of the Kaufland chain in Nymburk, was ceremonially put into operation by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade and the Minister of Transport, Karel Havlíček.
“Dynamic construction of stations is good news for the development of electric mobility in the Czech Republic,” said Miniter Havlíček. “A sufficiently dense network makes electric cars into a convenient means of transport, even in intercity travel. We definitely must not doddle with the construction of infrastructure, given that the number of purely electric cars and hybrids will soon be in the order of tens of thousands. It will also be important to transform our automobile industry towards the manufacture of electric cars, including, for example, the construction of a battery manufacturing plant, known as a gigafactory, directly in the Czech Republic. We are working hard on that.”
“The rapidly rising number of electric cars is a clear trend,” added Daniel Beneš, Chairman of the Management Board and CEO of ČEZ. “By building a reliable nationwide network of public charging stations, we support electromobility, not only in the Czech Republic but in the Central-European region as a whole. Furthermore, we guarantee drivers a supply of truly emissions-free power at most stands, thanks to certificates of the origin of power from renewable sources.”
ČEZ cooperates with partners such as retail and food networks, petrol stations, and car vendors, but also regions and cities, in expanding the public network of charging stations. Despite the pandemic restrictions, ČEZ will cross the threshold of 3 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) purchased this year. Even today, only locales boasting two or more stations are capable of fully covering the ever-increasing demand for public charging. In the future, ČEZ plans to focus specifically on building higher capacity stands able to charge electric cars even faster.
There are more than 6,000 electric cars currently registered in the Czech Republic, of which 3,300 were added last year. The count for the first three months of the year shows 585 new purely electric cars. Estimates of future development speak of annual sales of electric cars and plug-in hybrids in the order of thousands. Just as in other developed countries of Europe, electric cars are definitely becoming a regular part of the traffic in the Czech Republic.
