IONNA Launches, A True Rival to Superchargers, EA, and EVgo

This past week, I travelled to Apex, North Carolina for the launch event for the IONNA EV charging network. Anticipation has been building towards this launch ever since the announcement of the founding of this company. IONNA came into existence when eight major automakers were dissatisfied with the current options, and banded together to fund and build a major EV charging network for North America. A similar story look place in Europe where major automakers formed a joint venture to create the IONITY network a few years ago.

Video Tour and Chat with CEO

The Apex “Rechargery” is the first of many charging stations from IONNA. They took a 100 year old gas station and completely refurbished and modernized the site into a modern day DC charging station and lounge with amenities and refreshments. There are five high power dispensers with a total of 10 charging cords. Each dispenser is capable of 400 kW, or 200 kW when shared by two EVs. These units are also capable of charging both 400 and 800 volt cars at the same time. The site has a total 2.5 MW supply from the grid too, leaving some headroom for future-proofing and expansion.

My Model Y had a low state of charge, but it was unfortunately a bit too cold to charge at peak rates and stress test the units. However, the site was operating continuously for many hours charging well over 100 cars, seemingly without any breakdowns or faults.

NACS & CCS Connectors

Out of the 10 charging cords, four are NACS and six are CCS. But what makes the NACS dispensers unique is that they are capable of operating at up to 1000 volts, meaning these native NACS EV chargers can offer higher power outout than the current generation V3.5 Tesla Superchargers which are still on 400-500 volts. So until Tesla completes their full V4 Superchargers, the IONNA stations are where you want to come to charge a Cybertruck at maximum supported charging speeds.

Easy Authorization and Payment

IONNA will be supporting Plug-and-Charge with several car brands, but I’m just happy that they will have credit card readers integrated into their machines. No need to mess around with apps or accounts, just select your dispenser, tap your card to pre-authorize and than plug in. It was really dead simple to initiate a charging session with my Tesla, and the handshake time was only marginally slower than with a Supercharger.

There is a lot of excitement among EV enthusiasts about the launch of IOANNA and their aggressive network buildout plan. Four sites are currently announced on their websites and are close to starting operations, and they plan to bring a lot more online throughout 2025. In my video interview, CEO Seth Cutler told me that IONNA is going to be a North America wide charging network with future location planned for Canada too.