Porsche's fancy EV charging lounge has snacks and a smart mirror for workouts
Charging an electric Porsche is about to get less tedious, at least in some parts of the world.
On Wednesday, Porsche opened its first-ever Porsche Charging Lounge, a charging station that offers refreshments and other amenities to owners of electric Porsche vehicles.
The station, which is located outside Bingen am Rhein in Germany, offers six 300-kW DC fast charging stations, as well as four 22-kW AC charging stalls. But it also offers a lounge area with sanitary facilities, a "large selection" of soft drinks and snacks, fast wi-fi connection, and an area for workouts equipped with a "smart mirror," which can also display interactive Porsche content.
It doesn't sound like an overwhelming amount of fun, but it is better than sitting in your car or wandering about a parking lot while you wait for your car to charge, which is what the charging experience sometimes boils down to. A Porsche Taycan typically charges from 10 to 80 percent in about 20 minutes, so there's normally a bit of time to kill.
The Porsche Charging Lounge is partially powered by solar cells on the roof, and is heated and air-conditioned by a heat pump that operates without fossil fuels, says Porsche.
To access the lounge, the driver need to have a Porsche ID that's linked to the car; if the car's number plate is stored in the Porsche ID, the barrier preventing entry to the charging area will lift automatically. The lounge and the charger can also be accessed by using a Porsche Charging Card, or a QR code from the MyPorsche app.
Porsche plans to open more Charging Lounges in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The company boasts a network of more than 436,000 charging points in over 20 European countries. Porsche, which only has a single EV in its lineup, the Taycan (which admittedly does come in numerous configurations), plans to sell more than 80 percent all-electric new vehicles by 2030.
Porsche is not the first company with a luxury EV charging lounge, though. At some Supercharger locations, Tesla has a lounge that's accessible only to Tesla owners; last year, the company deployed futuristic cube lounges at a Supercharger station in Germany, offering bathroom facilities, snacks, and an automated pizza machine.
Topics Cars
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
