The largest electric vehicle charging hub in the Iberian Peninsula is now operational, and it is located in Madrid: 116 charging points at Intu Xanadú, the result of the collaboration between BMW and Galp

We need more openings like this one for electric mobility to keep advancing, because while the supply of electric vehicles keeps growing, charging infrastructure still falls short. However, facilities such as the new electric vehicle charging hub that BMW and Galp have just opened at Intu Xanadú (Madrid) make things a little easier. This is especially true considering that more than 12 million customers pass through the shopping centre’s facilities every year, and until now there were only a handful of charging points here, all of them “slow” chargers. Moreover, this charging hub, which becomes the largest in the Iberian Peninsula, does not serve only the shopping centre’s customers: its location, on the outskirts of Madrid next to the A5 motorway, is strategic for thousands of electric car users.

116 charging points, 16 of them fast chargers

Opened with considerable delay compared with the original schedule, which is another area to improve if electromobility is to advance (cutting or shortening the administrative procedures for commissioning these installations), the charging hub has 16 charging points with a power output of 180 kW, and 100 points of 22 kW. The maximum charging power of the fast chargers is not very high when considering the technology of the latest electric cars reaching the market, which accept powers of around 300 kW, and some even up to 400 kW. In any case, in general terms — it depends on the vehicle — these chargers can restore about 100 km of range in roughly 6–7 minutes in the case of fast charging, and in less than an hour and a half with the 22 kW units. The installation has a total power capacity of 3.6 megawatts, which guarantees the simultaneous charging of many vehicles without grid saturation problems.

Over the last five years, Galp has almost doubled each year the number of charging points installed in the Iberian Peninsula compared with the previous year, growing from the 500 chargers that formed its network in 2020 to more than 8,500 charging points today. The company, one of the main producers of solar energy in Iberia and operating more than 550 service stations, has invested more than 1.3 billion euros in Spain over this period in electromobility, with a strategy focused more on securing the best locations than on competing for the total number of charging points installed, according to Galp’s CEO in Spain, David Álvaro.

For its part, Manuel Terroba, CEO of BMW Group for Iberia, highlighted at the inauguration that since the brand’s first electric model, the BMW i3, launched in 2013, up to the recent presentation of the new BMW iX3, technology has advanced greatly in both range and charging power, and charging infrastructure must evolve in parallel to provide real solutions for customers, as manufacturers are doing.

Some figures for the Galp Electric charging hub at Intu Xanadú

• 116 charging points (16 fast charging and 100 semi-fast), the largest hub in the Iberian Peninsula
• Installed power of 3.6 MW, which guarantees simultaneous charging without saturation
• 100% green energy supply, from renewable sources
• Total area of 2,000 m² dedicated to charging
• More than 12.5 million annual visits to Intu Xanadú