Progress is never smooth, and we’ve experienced some hiccups. Following the migration, certain systems didn’t talk to each other as expected, which left some customers stuck in the pockets of our legacy platform. We recognize this caused both drivers and our partners some inconvenience at times. We had to prioritize getting the house in order before we could roll out features for the people who use our platform to run their businesses and get out on the road.
We want to thank the Plugsurfing team, who took the company forward this year. Listing all achievements might take a whole page, so we decided to focus on the main highlights. Will Gill led massive transformations in how our product team delivers new features to set the pace for commitment to our partners and a shared vision of the future in the years to come. Sofia Diakhate and Marcus Henriksson fine-tuned our operations and partner management. And Philip Jorgensen and Milena Lateva are taking our customer support to the next level to support a new generation of EV drivers.
The next generation of drivers is already here. People took to the road in EVs more than any year before. We processed a record of over 800,000 charge sessions in July and October on the platform and continue to see an upward growth trend. It’s a positive sign for all our partners and people who care for our planet.
We’ve also been working hard on extending our roaming network, which currently totals more than 400,000 connectors across Europe.
With Volvo and NIO, we launched a new product that brings the best of Plugsurfing to give their drivers a single touchpoint for their EV charging. Drive API is one of many innovations from Plugsurfing that takes the learnings from the early years of emobility to provide drivers with the most carefree experience. To get there, we needed to look beyond where we had been in the years before.
Plugsurfing has a new home in Fleetcor, which wants to take emoblity mainstream. We are excited that Tom Rowlands, our new leader, sees eye-to-eye with our vision of an emobility ecosystem based on an alliance of partners.
In 2022, we’ve set the foundation for the future. It was a year of patience and hard work, and together with our partners and the whole industry, we’re ready to meet the challenge.
No other year presented a challenge as we have seen in 2022. Our continent is steeped in the gravest crisis since the Second World War, with a shortage of the resources our industry needs to survive. But many of these resources are also from the internal combustion engine era. So now is our time as the emobility industry to shine and show what we can deliver for Europe and its future based on renewables and technology.
We’re building connected devices and cars designed to work in sync with each other. And we’re on the cusp of developing new software that will enable these devices to communicate with existing infrastructure and the power grid. So it’s exciting to see trends for 2023 turning towards bidirectional and smart charging.
Imagine how we can provide our continent with renewable energy storage for peak grid loads through bidirectional charging, reducing the need for natural gas. And how smart charging software can ensure that a grid does not buckle under the weight of a digitalizing economy, which we recognize requires more power than we generate currently. And when we have fewer resources to create that power. We know software can make our existing infrastructure more efficient.
The Alternative Fuels and Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) coming later next year is a welcome first step from policymakers to bring emobility to the forefront. Yet there’s so much more we as an industry can provide. So we at Plugsurfing, as pioneers in emobility, are committing to reaching out to our leaders in 2023 to help them see our industry as a crucial part of this future.
Next year is about building upon the foundation we made in 2022 to meet the electric future. Our products and services will match the ambition we see for our industry’s role in the future of Europe. We’ve never felt more confident in the Plugsurfing Power Platform and the services we build upon it for charge point operators, carmakers, and other players in the emobility ecosystem. Thanks for joining us, and see you on the road.
