The AMAG Group wants to achieve a net-zero carbon footprint by 2040. For this to happen, purely battery-electric vehicles need to account for at least 70% of AMAG sales by 2030. We want to increasingly produce the electricity for these electric cars ourselves together with partners. The full service will also include intelligent charging solutions for energy management at work and at home.
AMAG has always been able to count on exceptional expertise on the vehicle side. We further intensified our energy, charging and electromobility activities in 2022, bundling them into the new AMAG Energy & Mobility business unit, which includes offerings from Clyde, Volton and Helion. Clyde is an innovative subscription package for flexible vehicle use. We launched the drive to become a purely electric mobility provider at the start of 2022, and this process will be completed in 2024. With the Volton brand, the AMAG Group offers advice and servicing for business and fleet customers. Volton developed a charging network with access to over 7000 public charging stations in Switzerland in 2022.
Our full service provides ecological and economic benefits for those switching to electromobility.
In 2022, AMAG acquired Helion – a leading Swiss specialist in the fields of photovoltaics, electricity storage, heat pumps and charging stations for electric vehicles, with services ranging from consulting and planning to installation and maintenance. “Joining forces with Helion and its 460 employees enables us to vastly expand our range of electromobility services,” says Martin Everts, Managing Director of AMAG Energy & Mobility. AMAG and Helion also want to work together to deliver a smart-charging solution that enables electric cars to be used as storage devices, in order to ensure better use of solar power, and as buffer storage units, in order to stabilise the power grid.
Helion has been part of AMAG since November 2022 and offers huge potential for collaborative solutions and offerings, one future focus area being smart-charging solutions. Rebecca Berghaus (RBe), Director Fleet at AMAG Retail, and Roger Bitterli (RBi), Key Account Management Commercial at Helion, discuss the challenges that need to be overcome when developing these collaborative offerings.
What stage is the collaboration at?
RBi: We have already worked together with AMAG before. But now it is a case of growing together quickly and clearly communicating our one-stop shop offering to the market.
RBe: We are having lots of meetings to advance the integration. For me, it is a top priority for this process to also take place in the individual sales regions, by visiting customers together, as this will allow us to demonstrate our combined strengths in advice and sales.
For whom does your combined offering add value?
RBe: We do not focus on a specific target group. Our customers range from SMEs with five vehicles to major corporations. When we realise a company has an interest in sustainability and is considering electric vehicles and their own electricity production, we bring Helion on board.
RBi: Our roots are in photovoltaics, so we are quick to get involved when it comes to electric cars and the overall concept. When we at Helion and you at Fleet coordinate our messages effectively, the target groups quickly realise that we add value for them as a duo.
Vehicles as energy storage devices
Using electric cars as energy storage devices? Dr Jonas Huber, Senior Researcher at the Power Electronic Systems Laboratory at ETH Zurich, explaines the challenges of bidirectional charging in practice and the value it can add.
What challenges do you face in the market?
RBe: Electromobility is advice-intensive because technological developments advance extremely quickly. By way of example, the VW Group brought the first vehicles suitable for bidirectional charging to market at the start of 2023 and intends to equip all of its electric cars with this feature by 2024. This opens up new possibilities for collaborative solutions…
RBi: …and offers huge potential for sustainable electromobility. We now install a 10-kW storage device at the home of every second customer – for buffer storage of the electricity generated by the photovoltaic system. Today’s electric cars can store up to 70 kW in their batteries. AMAG wants to play a major part in harnessing this potential to provide a reliable supply of electricity.
What are the obstacles here?
RBi: Bidirectional or smart charging is not yet possible due to the legal situation.
RBE: Examples from the Netherlands show that bidirectional charging works. We want to communicate this more.
AMAG wants to play a big part in harnessing the potential of smart charging.
Which is more important on the customer side – ecological or economic arguments?
RBe: Most companies today have ecological sustainability goals. But, at the end of the day, the CFO looks at the overall cost of a solution. In other words, the economic sustainability, which is also a must, of course. Electromobility is changing the overall financial picture. Vehicle costs used to be the main concern, but things are far more complex today – on account of the infrastructure costs and fluctuations in energy prices and feed-in tariffs, for example.
RBi: Yes, rising energy prices have led to a lot changes. The CEO and CFO now have to ask themselves whether they can afford not to install a photovoltaic system.
RBe: That is why Helion and Fleet need to provide top-quality advice. We want to be there every step of the way for companies switching to electromobility, and show them the ecological and economic benefits of our full service.
