Park & Charge

Park & Charge is a European infrastructure for charging electric vehicles.

At reserved parking spaces for electric vehicles a simple, locked charging station with all necessary sockets and safety facilities is installed to which only "Park & Charge" users have access. Electric vehicles are in generally energy efficient, and therefore at a "Park & Charge" chargers requires relatively small quantities of electricity. By not having complicated metering technology and with the simplest organizational measures such as a (flat rate) cost, the administrative costs are kept low.

Park & Charge runs an open database LEMnet since 1998 that lists its own charging stations as well as that of other infrastructure providers in Europe.

In 1992, the first four locations of Park & Charge were established under the "pilot and demonstration project P & D" of the Federal Office of Energy in Bern. After a three-year experimental phase, the project went into regular operation. The Electromobile Club of Switzerland (ECS), which has accompanied the project, took over the financial and legal responsibility for Park & Charge. In the subsequent period Park & Charge became so popular that it needed to be legally formalised. At the end of 1997 Park & Charge was founded as an independent association (President: Wilfried Blum, Managing Director: Eduard Stolz).

Park & Charge stations became available beyond the borders as well. The German Solar Mobility Association founded an organization for the operation in Germany in 1997. Since 1999 there are Park & Charge stations in Italy and Austria. As for Austria VLOTTE has taken over the operations since 2010 which is a project by the "Vorarlberger Elektroautomobil Planungs- und Beratungs GmbH" in cooperation with the VKW Utility Company Vorarlberg (Vorarlberger Kraftwerke AG). More charging points became available in Liechtenstein, France and the Netherlands.

In the Canton Ticino the federal "P & D" project was continued with studies for „Veicoli Elettrici Leggeri“ (light electric vehicles) running from 1995 to 2001 (VEL1) and from 2001 to 2005 (VEL2). With the help of those projects an electric vehicle network of charging stations was deployed which is operated by RiParTI (Ricariche e Parcheggi in Ticino – Charging and Parking in Ticino).

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Wikipedia