Nicknamed “coffee & charge”, the goal of this initiative is to introduce charging stations in 6 Spanish cities, allowing electric cars to be recharged in the amount of time it takes to have a coffee.

The goal of the SURTIDOR Project is to develop an experimental, super-fast charging station for electric vehicle batteries, allowing the storage battery of a 20 kWh vehicle to recharge 80% of its useful capacity in less than 30 minutes.

The program has been developed through a consortium of businesses led by GH Electrotermia, and also including Saft Baterías, Iberdrola Generación, Endesa Ingeniería, Talleres Herga, Desarrollo Automovilidad, the Institute of Electric Technology, the University of Oviedo and the Center of Technological Research from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (CITCEA UPC). In addition, to get the project started, it’s expected that the services of the University of Valencia, the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, the IREC, AICIA and CINERGIA will be subcontracted.

Currently, the most useful alternative is to recharge during the night at home, taking advantage of the lower electricity rates and the peaks in generation from renewable energies such as wind. However, the SURTIDOR program introduces an important innovation: the possibility of super-fast recharging for electric automobiles in the time it takes to have a coffee. This would allow them to make long distance journeys and is referred to as “coffee & charge”.

Further, the project envisages including a series of value added services, such as measuring systems and payment methods, identification of users and vehicles and georeferencing. It will also have information systems about users and suppliers, and tools to integrate this into the supply network. This could translate, for example, into sending the user an sms when the vehicle recharging is complete.

With this project the business consortium hopes to help satisfy the demand generated by the 80 million electric cars that are expected to be in service around the world in 2020, and for which around 200,000 rapid charging stations will be required. The SURTIDOR program will be rolled out from 2010 to 2012 in the provinces of Valencia, Madrid, Bilbao, Seville, Oviedo and Barcelona. The budget is €3,512,770.