Hyundai to nearly double ultra-fast EV chargers by 2024

Hyundai Motor Group is set to increase its ultra-fast electric vehicle chargers across South Korea from current 286 to 500 by next year, the auto giant said on Sunday.

E-pit is equipped with a charger of a maximum 350 kilowatt (kW) output. This can raise the charging rate of Hyundai Motor Co.'s IONIQ 5, which has 400V and 800V charging systems, from 10% to 80% in about 18 minutes.

The average charging time for electric cars using Hyundai’s dedicated EV platform E-GMP was 18.5 minutes, the shortest to date, according to the group’s data collected last year.

Hyundai started the high-speed EV charging service under its E-pit brand in Korea in April 2021, with the installation of 72 chargers at 12 expressway rest stops. The group monitors the chargers 24 hours a day to quickly respond to failures.

In addition to the E-pit system, Hyundai Motor Group will install 3,000 ultra-fast EV chargers through its affiliate Korea Electric Vehicle Charging Service (KEVCS) and 20,000 slow chargers via Hyundai Engineering Co. by 2025.

The group, alongside a local machinery and electronics testing agency Korea Testing Certification, is operating a center for EV charging infrastructure quality verification. Hyundai expects to improve the quality of electric car chargers and increase certification services for overseas markets.

To expand its E-pit customer base, Hyundai last year launched a membership service, E-pit Pass, which offers up to a 20% discount on total charging fares. Use of the membership is available at 72,000 charging stations from Hyundai’s five partners, KEVCS, Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), Everon, Starkoff and Hyundai Engineering.

The auto group said that in the second half of this year, the use of E-pit Pass will be available for around 260,000 chargers, some 85% of EV chargers in the country.  

There were 565,154 electric cars registered and 305,309 chargers in Korea as of last December, according to Ministry of Environment data. The government aims to increase those numbers to 590,000 EVs by 2025 and 1.2 million chargers by 2030.

Some half of the chargers in the country were installed in the Seoul metropolitan area, which includes the capital, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, due to the high penetration of EVs and populations.

The ministry has budgeted 371.5 billion won in EV charging facility subsidies for this year, a 42% increase from last year. The government has allocated up to 70 million won per fast charger to support the growth of the domestic EV charging ecosystem.

Write to Nan-Sae Bin at binthere@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.