KARACHI: On Tuesday, two leading German companies, Audi and Siemens, uncovered Pakistan’s first and only mega DC charging station fitted with Siemens SICHARGE D series chargers with speeds of up to 160kw at the Libra CNG Station, also recognised as the Libra Charging Hub, in Saddar.
Abdul Haseeb Khan, CEO of Libra Energy Solutions, stated in his opening speech that his family has been in the oil business for the last 50 years. Then, in the 1990s, his father, Abdul Sami Khan, opened the first Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) station in town. And now he’s introduced an Electric Vehicle (EV) charging station.
Siemens-Pakistan CEO Markus Strohmeier expressed admiration for Libra Energy’s initiative in venturing into unknown territory with CNG in the 1990s and now with the charging hub. “Karachi has demonstrated that it is at the forefront of technological development integration.”
He described their charging station as the first rapid charger in Pakistan, taking only 15 minutes to charge larger cars like the Audi e-tron and four or five minutes to charge smaller EVs.
“Such charging stations are desperately needed on your highways.” “It will be a small investment to see the cars move from city to city,” he said, noting that there is plenty of undeveloped land alongside our highways that could be turned into solar farms.
Addressing the gathering, Karachi Administrator Barrister Murtaza Wahab expressed gratitude to people like Abdul Sami Khan for thinking of CNG over 30 years ago and for continuing to adapt to changing times by converting his CNG station into a charging station.
“I also use an EV privately and want to tell you that those who have decided to switch to these vehicles have entirely removed their fuel costs.” Fuel prices are at an all-time high in 2022. “These vehicles are also environmentally friendly because they use renewable energy from the sun and wind,” he added.
