Year  2017

Role  Industrial Design Lead

Studio  frog (Munich)

The first "intelligent" charging station that you can book and use without friction.

Qwello is an innovative public charging operator with a vision to create easy access and easy-to-use charging stations. They want to enable a new urban e-mobility and thereby contribute to the decarbonisation of the economy. They seek to transform today's electric vehicle lifestyle, leaving behind the complexities from today, creating space for efficient and effortless e-mobility.

My role as the industrial design lead was to set up on site research to better understand today's problems and coming up with both physical and digital solutions that will solve the pain points we've gathered. Creating a system that will, through an intelligent combination of hardware and software, offer significantly greater user-friendliness.
In this program, I worked hand and hand with the UI lead to define the best UX for qwello's future customer as well as collaborating with our branding team to create a coherent and holistic brand promise.

Credits   Hira Verick, Creative Director
Credits    Bertold Engler, Mechanical design lead
Credits     Mathias Mouchard, UI lead
Credits     Beniamin Gracci, Visual designer lead
Credits     Emilio Patuzzo, Visual designer

An effortless charging experience at everyone's reach.

Qwello removes the annoyances EV users face everyday to simplify their charging experience.

*This was the status of the assets I worked on back in 2017 when we handed over the project. Brand name has changed and app has been refreshed since then.

Most of current solution were also looking like big boxes, robust and vandal-proof for city streets but their integration in city environment were questionable. Also when speaking to people, lot of them said that those boxes come off intimidating, as they were looking like those city owned electric utility boxes that only city workers can interact with.

My intention when coming to product design was to propose a product at the intersection of public furniture an product design in order to better integrate cities landscape. This was the main reason we went for a lamp post architecture, small footprint, visible and known by everybody. 

Researchs.

We did travel to get insights from the field, and check more mature market at that time like Norway. But we also checked France, Germany, Italy, UK and Sweden for a broader range of cultural habits and charging systems.

Backbone story.

During our research we noticed that a lot of brands and cities have low height charging stations. The problem was with cars like SUV or utility van, parking or stationing in front and hiding stations for drivers on the look out.
My take was then to create a product like a lighthouse : visible no matter what & guide drivers easily to them.

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Qwello went live in 2020 in several places in Munich, Germany. They then launched in other cities like Frankfurt and Stockholm. In 2021, they raised a substantial investment of €50 million from an US-based private equity firm, to support their growth and market expansion.

Photo from the Frankfurter Neue Presse © Hamerski