Replacing Curbs With New Sidewalk Chargers Promises To Make EV Ownership Even More Convenient

Rural drivers may be convinced they couldn’t possibly own an EV because of how far they drive, and yet, I do just fine living in a pretty rural area with a 150-mile Fiat 500e. That doesn’t necessarily mean a new 500e would work for you, specifically, because there’s a good chance it wouldn’t, but urban apartment dwellers who can’t charge at home often have far bigger issues finding reliable charging than those in rural and suburban areas. One German arms dealer manufacturer, however, has a possible solution — chargers that fit right into the curb on the sidewalk, InsideEVs reports. 

The idea of adding chargers along sidewalks isn’t exactly new. We’ve had chargers mounted on light poles for a while now, and I regularly used one back when I lived in LA’s Koreatown before I ended up back in Georgia. Still, the cords can be clunky, and the chargers themselves aren’t exactly pretty to look at. Rheinmetall, a German company known mainly for making armored military vehicles, has a much more elegant solution in the form of Level 2 charging boxes designed to slot into the curb itself. There’s no cable included, meaning you’ll have to travel with your own cable, but that’s a pretty minor inconvenience, all things considered. 

If you want something that will charge your car up to 80% as fast as physically possible, Reinmetall’s sidewalk chargers won’t do that, but that’s also not the point. They’re more for city dwellers who park on the street and still want to charge their EVs. And in that use case, their maximum charge speed of 22 kW is pretty much perfect. Imagine driving to dinner, plugging in where you park and returning to a mostly charged car when you’re done eating. That’s more of what they’re going for here. 

To collect payment, Reinmetall says its curb chargers will work with an app on your phone, but users will also be able to use an RFID card or scan the QR code on the charger. And since they’re German, they know a thing or two about inclement weather. These charge boxes are reportedly designed to be submerged in more than three feet of water for up to 30 minutes and can also automatically cut power if the street floods for too long. 

They were also designed to withstand regular downpours and have built-in heaters to keep snow or ice from becoming an issue during the winter. It isn’t clear how well they’d handle a snowplow covering them in multiple feet of snow, but even if that’s a problem, they could still be deployed in most of the U.S. without any issue since so few cities actually get that much snow every winter. If the charge box breaks, Reinmetall claims it is also designed for easy replacement. Simply swap out one box for one that works, and you’re back online. 

These curb chargers still haven’t been deployed on a large scale, so more issues could definitely pop up as they get more popular, but the initial results from Reinmetall’s year-long test were still promising. Over 12 months, their test units had a reported uptime of 99%, even with all the winter and other weather issues they deal with in Germany. 

Is it the silver bullet that will solve all potential issues overnight? Not at all. Still, it looks like a great way to increase the number of public chargers in cities where they’d work, and it’s nice to see companies taking people who can’t charge at home into consideration. If EVs are going to become more common, we need more options for charging, and if these actually work as well as they look like they could, they could end up being a great way to make charging more accessible to more people.