Siemens unveils domestic charging station

- Siemens has launched its first domestic charging stations for electric vehicles, joining General Electric and automakers such as Chevrolet and Nissan in a market getting steadily more competitive.

The German industrial giant unveiled its charger last month, promising "safe, highly reliable plug-in EV charging."

The residential wall-mounted charging stations is ruggedized, delivers a 7.2 kW charge and, like its competitor from General Electric, is smart grid compatible.

This means that it can be combined with the energy giant's other products used by electricity suppliers to manage demand and supply of power during peak charging times, which Siemens says will be "giving consumers options while avoiding service disruptions."

The publicly-available charging stations will also connect to the US Coulomb ChargePoint Network, a service which provides drivers with the ability to locate available public stations from their smartphone, map trips before heading out and automatically be billed for use of a station afterwards.

Although pricing isn't confirmed, it could be fairly hefty - while the charging units supplied by Nissan and Chevrolet are under $1000, third party chargers such as the $1,000 - $1,500 WattStation or $2,500 Coulomb CT500 tend to be more.