The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) confirmed that, despite the COVID-19 crisis, it will have no problem continuing with the installation of 28 fast chargers for electric cars.
“We want to be pioneers. We are a company that wants to collaborate with the whole issue of decarbonization. We want to build a national network so that the initiative of having an electric vehicle is not lost,” said the institution’s Electric Mobility coordinator, Bernal Muñoz.
Muñoz explained, despite the global crisis caused by COVID-19, this facility will not suffer delays and, rather, seeks to adjust to the established schedule.
“There has been no significant delay. It is an international public tender. We all know the global situation we have, but, according to our program, we can do it on established dates,” said Muñoz.
These would add to the current charging network for electric cars, which has 34 semi-fast chargers and 11 fast chargers in all the provinces of the country.
The new chargers are more powerful. Currently, the fast chargers in the country – which allow a battery charge of 0% to 80% in 20 minutes.
They are not cheap. ICE will spend around $1.4 million dollars, financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Thes units are expected to arrive in the country between August and September and would be installed before the end of the year.
“There are no chargers of this type in the country. Not even in the region (Latin America), dare I say, that in public networks it hardly exists,” said Muñoz.
Costa Rica is one of the countries with the most chargers for electric cars – both fast and semi-fast – in Central America and the Caribbean, along with the Dominican Republic, according to the PlugShare charger compiler application.
The chargers, in addition, have the particularity that they have a connector for Chinese technology, something that the current ones do not have and for which an adapter is needed in the cars of that country of origin.
