November 17 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian charging stations operator Eldrive said that it is putting in place three new electric vehicle (EV) fast-charging hubs on main transport routes in Bulgaria, in what is the first phase in the development of the country's charging network.
The first two facilities, which are already in operation, are located at The Mall shopping centre in the capital Sofia and at Via Park North retail park in the second-largest city of Plovdiv, Eldrive said in a statement on Wednesday.
The third site is near the Struma motorway, which leads to Greece, and will enter operation in the next few weeks.
The three hubs have a capacity of between 120 kW and 180 kW. Between four and five superchargers made in partnership with the local unit of Swedish-Swiss ABB. The superchargers, which have two connectors each, will allow the fast charging of at least eight EVs at each of the locations.
Eldrive and ABB will continue their joint work on building fast-charging EV hubs to promote e-mobility in Bulgaria and Southeast Europe, ABB Bulgaria e-mobility business lead Angel Dimitrov said in the statement.
Eldrive, a wholly-owned unit of Bulgarian company eMobility International, has over 600 EV charging points installed in Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania.
Last week, the ministry of energy announced that it will spend 140 million levs ($74 million/71.6 million euro) on the construction of over 200 EV fast-charging stations across Bulgaria, as part of a 172 million levs overall investment in green transport infrastructure.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)