With over 75,000 charging points across more than 55 countries worldwide, EVBox is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of EV charging stations and charging management software. It was founded back in 2010, when the EV market was still in its infancy. It offers products such as home, business and public charging stations.
Kristof Vereenooghe is EVBox’s CEO. We asked him how charging technology and infrastructure are developing.
“To start, we need to think that we are developing smart charging infrastructure knowing that we will probably have 30 million electric vehicles on the road by 2025. This is a massive uptake that requires consumers, businesses, and cities to think about the change in driver’s behaviour and how a smart charging ecosystem can help out.”
“Two of the main developments we’ve seen technology-wise is the strong rise of fast (DC) and ultra-fast charging, and the increasing importance of software and smart features,” he adds.
EVBox is a truly global company, with projects running across Europe, North America, and South America. But how can it be effective both globally and locally?
“We believe it’s crucial to have both the right people at EVBox and the right local partners. At our company we have over 40 different nationalities coming from all over the world. Each person brings their own unique experience and understanding of their home market, allowing us to be effective in many different countries. Furthermore, we partner up with many local installers, distributors and resellers to make our offering as local and customized as possible.”
EVBox was acquired in 2017 by the French energy utility ENGIE, who identified it as a disruptive, company making a difference in the fast-growing industry of electric mobility. And in 2018, EVBox acquired the ultra-fast charging station manufacturer EVTronic. This move added seven hundred 700 fast charging stations to its European network.
“We get a lot of backing and trust from ENGIE, which is enabling us to invest and scale-up rapidly. For example, two years ago, we had around 60 EVBoxers, which has now increased to over 400 worldwide. It’s also empowering to see that ENGIE also values our independence and ability to work with many different companies (including other utility companies), to help us become the global leader in EV charging solutions.”
The company states that its mission is to accelerate the transition towards a zero emissions future. So how is it putting into practice what it preaches?
Vereenooghe told us: “Each department is working on optimizing and reducing waste where they can. However, we also see we’re not there (yet) and can still further improve, that’s why we launched our ‘Journey to Sustainability‘ initiative beginning of this year. A cross-departmental team is working on reducing emissions throughout our daily work – for example we just launched a new travel policy where we strongly encourage all staff to avoid flying when possible. We also hold ourselves accountable by publicly sharing our learnings and challenges on our road towards becoming emission-free.”
Vereenooghe told us what’s next up for his fast growing company.
“With all our products we put our customers & EV-drivers’ needs first. All new products that we are launching today are only made commercially available after extensive user research, making sure our stations are easy to install, use and maintain. For example, all new products are ADA compliant (wheelchair accessible), and feature innovate cable management systems and touch based interfaces to make it as easy as possible to interact with our products.”
He adds: “We will continue to create products that are also modular, so we can easily adapt based on our customers wishes.”
EVBox recently won awards for iF Design and Red Dot Design for its latest charging stations. Vereenooghe says they’re confident that EVBox is on the right path.
