French JV launches EV charging station

  • October 11, 2022
  • William Payne

Software République, a French joint venture between Atos, Dassault Systèmes, Orange, Renault Group, STMicroelectronics and Thales, has developed a bidirectional charging station for electric vehicles intended for consumers and fleet use.

The Mobilize Powerbox is designed to enable recharging for all users of EVs, improve intelligent management of electricity networks and provide a solution to cybersecurity risks in integration of EV charging networks.

The company also states that the charging system is intended to “strengthen industrial and technological sovereignty”, by which it means the creation of an all-French EV charging station for use in France, in place of US or other foreign EV technologies.

The charging station has a power range of 7 to 22 kW, and brings together technologies from French companies: Orange in 4G telecommunications and related services; Renault Group in the architecture of Electric Vehicle charging systems; STMicroelectronics in semiconductors, with its microprocessor and communication coprocessor providing an interoperable solution capable of providing intelligent charging services, especially bidirectional V2G (vehicle-to-grid) charging; and Thales cybersecurity and data protection.

The project members also teamed with other technology partners for their expertise, including IoTecha Corp, for the electronic design of the charging station, and LACROIX for its manufacture at Symbiose, the company’s new electronics assembly factory. Importantly for the joint venture, manufacture of the station will be carried out in France.

The project also involves Mobilize — a Renault Group brand aimed at smart mobility. The products of the “Mobilize Powerbox” range will be marketed in 2023. The bidirectional version will allow the storage capacity of a vehicle’s Li-ion battery to be used as an energy source. Without impacting the autonomy required for mobility and with complete simplicity, the system will make it possible to control the flow of energy, to improve the rate of use of renewable energy and to support the electricity network by re-injecting energy into it when needed: a scalable, adaptive charging station that can transform a vehicle into a model power plant. Fifty thousand systems of this type (vehicle and charging station) combined produce the equivalent of a power plant and can thus supplement fossil fuel production. Thus, each owner of the “Mobilize Powerbox” V2G charging station connected to an EV becomes an actor of the ecological transition.