First Huawei Chargers at IONITY

Yes, a third newsletter this week. I don't like filling your inbox, but this is a week of huge news. And this one I have been sitting on for four months.

KEY POINTS

Two weeks ago I wrote about IONITY Elverum (Østerdalsporten) in Norway. It was the only IONITY site listed at 500 kW: Ekoenergetyka's split solution with AXON SAT 400 (dispenser) and AXON SIDE DLBS (power unit), opened in December 2025. IONITY called it their first pilot of this technology.

Then came six incident reports. The cars' pyrofuses fired while charging. IONITY told Adressa that the charger manufacturer had confirmed a fault and that the chargers would be replaced. When I looked, the whole site was offline.

A pilot is there to prove something. Unfortunately, this was not a successful pilot.

Yesterday I saw Elverum online again. This time, instead of 6 charge points at 500 kW, 4 were at 600 kW and 2 at 500 kW. So I talked to my network and found the surprising, or let's say, my expected replacement.

Huawei. Yes! Huawei at IONITY.

The two 400 kW points on site are Alpitronic. They are not part of this.

I think it was easy to install. The cable works already existed, because the Ekoenergetyka setup was also a split system: power cabinets in one place, dispensers at the parking bays.

At Power2Drive in Munich in June, IONITY and Huawei announced the deal at the Huawei stand. It lasted maybe five minutes. I was there, took these photos and kept them. I was waiting to see it in reality before I posted them.

Here it is.

This is now Huawei's pilot, at one of Europe's biggest charging networks. And they have to prove it.

Huawei is not new to European CPOs. I know of 5 Electra sites already running Huawei (France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands). And we all know Electra is one of the fastest-scaling CPOs, while keeping a really good reputation for site design and reliability.

Earlier this week I explained that they even took over 374 charge points from Mercedes-Benz Charging. Check it here: Newsletter | Video

This is the make or break moment. If it works out at IONITY, it is on the scale of EnBW working with XCharge.

I wrote about that one in detail in February and made the claim that XCharge would become EnBW's second supplier. The first reaction was strong denial. Even former XCharge employees were amused and did not believe it. When it happened, I was congratulated by the brains at EnBW. 😄

So today I am telling you: Huawei is there. Now let's see.

About Me:

I am an independent e-mobility consultant. I worked at a charger manufacturer and sold 400+ DC fast chargers in Germany before going on my own. I have built a database of 600+ DC chargers available in the EU, with their strengths and weaknesses. I have a network of EPCs, turnkey solution providers and service partners, so I hear about market shifts in real time. And I have mapped 130,000+ DC charging points across Europe, down to the charger maker behind each charge point. So I see which chargers are being installed, and which are being replaced.

Email me at [email protected]. Let's discuss your project!

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