The Polestar 1’s European test drive at Villa Cora, Florence, (11 Nov – 22 Nov) was powered by renewable energy from our green hydrogen fuel cell system.
With Siemens, we installed a fuel cell system in the grounds of the fabulous Villa Cora to produce electricity to charge the Polestar 1. The beautiful venue, with its architectural importance and unrivalled location overlooking the city of Florence, has one thing in common with many hotels around the globe, it doesn’t have the spare electrical network capacity required to power a bank of rapid EV chargers.
Off-grid energy for events is usually provided exclusively by large diesel generators. We’re delighted to have provided power for the event’s 10 fast chargers and 2 rapid chargers using a system that doesn’t produce any harmful emissions or burn fossil fuel.
Jonathan Goodman, Chief Operating Officer at Polestar said: “We are launching an electric vehicle brand, it’s our first car and to have the opportunity to generate sustainable energy on site was the perfect match for us.
“We had wonderful roads in Florence, but virtually no EV infrastructure at all so a big challenge for us was how we were going to charge our cars ready for journalists to drive. We got the perfect solution with GeoPura and Siemens.”