Kia dealers will allow electric car owners to charge for free

If you’ve done a road trip in an electric vehicle (EV) over a long weekend or busy period, you’ll know that public chargers are both hard to come by and plagued with issues.

So as car brands move toward tolling out electric vehicles, they are looking at unique ways to help prevent frustration for their customers. Kia is tackling this head on by rolling out its own fast-charging network within its dealerships.

Speaking to CarExpert at a recent event, Kia Australia CEO Damien Meredith said the rollout has commenced and the plan is to make this free of charge for Kia’s customers.

“We’re about to spend quite a lot of money with our dealer network to upgrade their charging stations at the dealership,” said Mr Meredith.

“And we’re in constant discussion with the government in regards to how we can help with the rollout, but struggling because you’ve got extra levels of government. It’s not easy.

“So we’ve decided to upgrade all our dealers in regards to charging stations [in response to what Kia is doing to get the government to fix public charging]. And that’s beginning now.

“The philosophy is that it’ll be free for Kia customers and then other customers pay to use. It’s been working quite well with one of our dealerships in Canberra. That has been working exceptionally well.”

While Kia hasn’t nailed down the exact specifics of charge speed and pricing for non-Kia customers, all the chargers are expected to be DC fast chargers.

This will limit the amount of time customers need to spend at a dealership while they wait for their vehicle to charge.

Kia says this solution gives the company much more control over infrastructure, which is currently lacking when it comes to available public charging solutions.