Artois Mobilités: an innovative recharging solution for employees

Today, the TADAO network has almost 565 vehicles available at peak times and some 500 employees working every day to guarantee the mobility of the region’s residents.

The employees, used to working with Artois Mobilités’ environmentally-friendly means of transport, equipped themselves with electric vehicles over time. But they were faced with a constraint: they needed to recharge on their home-work journeys, often at high public rates. With this in mind, Artois Mobilités decided to take action and offer its employees in Béthune an invaluable advantage: to enable them to recharge their personal vehicle during their working day, thanks to Eiko.

While it is virtuous to develop a flotte of cleaner urban buses, we also have to think about our employees. Many of us at Artois Mobilités and among Tadao employees are now switching to electric vehicles. We want to make life easier for our employees by offering recharging points in the car park that can be accessed directly with a bank card. This means they can return to their car charged up after the day’s work.

Benoit Descamps, Director of Communications Artois Mobilités

Artois Mobilités wanted to offer a credit card payment solution at an attractive price. Thanks to Eiko’s order-taking interface, employees can place their orders easily, specifying the amount of energy required and their parking time. Eiko also means there are no surprises when it comes to the cost of recharging. The cost of the charge is displayed when the order is placed.

The recharging solution installed at the Béthune depot has proved to be a valuable advantage for employees. It saves them time compared with their usual morning or evening routine, and is very competitively priced. This workplace charging service also encourages employees to make the transition to electric vehicles. It is also an additional service for TADAO in its efforts to improve QWL (Quality of Life at Work), which includes making daily journeys more comfortable.

I have an electric vehicle and it takes me about fifty kilometres to get to the depot. On the way home, I would stop at a public station to recharge. I needed at least half an hour, which was quite restrictive on my return journeys, and I often had to ask myself how much range I had left before I could get home.

Since the Eiko solution has been on the depot, I’ve been able to fully charge my vehicle’s battery during my working day, giving me a range of up to 300 kilometres.

It has really improved my comfort by optimising my charging slots. I’m now in a situation where I can work with peace of mind without ever having to worry about finding a charging station between work and home.

Mathieu, Artois employee and user of the Eiko recharging service

“Today, the employees who use this solution are satisfied with the service offered to them: attractive rates, practicality and a circular economy. We are working on a sustainable solution where the batteries in the Eiko station are recharged at night, during off-peak hours, to deliver this energy to our employees’ vehicles at attractive prices during the day.

Benoit Descamps, Director of Communications Artois Mobilités

Plug & Play installation of 10 charge points, with no external works or electrical infrastructure required

With the depots due to be completely rebuilt in 2019, Artois Mobilités now wanted to keep infrastructure work on the car park to a minimum. However, it would not have been possible to install around ten charging points in the traditional way without major electrical adaptations.

The Béthune site has a total power output of 36kW, which would have only allowed the installation of five 7.4kW bollards.

Thanks to the Eiko power cube, a single 25kW connection is enough to store energy at night, when the depot is at a standstill, and supply 10 7.4kW charge points during the day.

With regard to the installation of the Eiko power cube, the depot had 36 kW available for nominal operation and the power cube required 25 kW. The simple fact of running a single cable between the main building and the Eiko power cube allowed for a very fluid installation, with no major works to the car park, and with no particular change to our energy supplier.

Benoit Descamps, Director of Communications Artois Mobilités

Thanks to our Eikolink system of above-ground, interconnected charging points, our teams were able to commission the entire charging system in just 5 days, without any earthworks. Installing traditional charging points would have taken much longer, particularly for digging trenches and running cables.

The advantage of this solution is that it can be installed in the existing right-of-way and does not require any major external works: Plug and Play. The solution is installed. Plug it in like you would plug in an electrical appliance. And it works.

Benoit Descamps, Director of Communications Artois Mobilités

While the 10 charging points installed at Béthune are currently sufficient to meet the site’s recharging needs, we are only at the beginning of the electrification of our employees’ vehicle fleets. In a few years’ time, Artois Mobilités may need to increase the number of charging points in the car park. Thanks to Eiko, our public institution will be able to meet the growth in demand. Today, we have installed ten charging points. If we want to add two, three, four or ten more tomorrow, it’s easy and there are no constraints. And once again, without any roadworks on the site.

Benoit Descamps, Director of Communications Artois Mobilités

An innovative solution in line with the public institution’s environmental values

For several years, Artois Mobilités has been a forerunner in the adoption of innovative solutions to promote the energy transition in mobility. In 2019, the TADAO network fleet was 100% diesel. Six years later, diesel-only vehicles account for less than 27% of the fleet. These initiatives are reflected in the carbon footprint left by the TADAO network, and mark a strong CSR commitment on the part of the operator.

In 2019, we became the first network in France to launch a line operated entirely with hydrogen-powered buses. We even had our own hydrogen production station. In 2021, we had the largest fleet of urban buses in France running exclusively on rapeseed, and we’re still looking for innovations.

Benoit Descamps, Director of Communications Artois Mobilités

As part of its ongoing CSR and innovation policy, the public institution has chosen Eiko. Thanks to its integrated batteries, the power cube can store energy at night, during the hours when France’s energy consumption is lowest, so that staff vehicles can be recharged during the day, when energy is more expensive. In this way, Eiko smoothes out peaks in electricity consumption: energy is stored when the grid is available, to be redistributed when it is more in demand, thus limiting the power demand at peak times.

It was also the presence of reused batteries in Eiko that caught the attention of Artois Mobilité’s decision-makers. These batteries, which come from the automotive industry and were first used as traction batteries in electric vehicles, have been reconditioned for use in the Eiko cube.

The question of what to do with batteries is becoming increasingly important. This solution has the advantage of recycling old car batteries, combining them in a power cube and storing energy at night for use in private vehicles during the day. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Benoit Descamps, Director of Communications Artois Mobilités