Cute, Quirky IONNA EV Charging Consortium Brings Its A Game

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The IONNA EV charging station consortium unveiled itself last year with a plan to treat EV drivers in the US and Canada to lounge-type style and comfort while they charge up, and now Tesla CEO Elon Musk has handed them a golden opportunity to present their retro-chic “Rechargery” model as a welcome alternative to the Tesla Supercharger network. IONNA aims to make the most of the opportunity under a new brand creation and design partnership with the global marketing powerhouse VLM.

Supercharging The IONNA EV Charging Brand Identity

For all the fuss over the Tesla’s rapid buildup of its Supercharger network, the company failed to consider what might happen when other EV charging stakeholders begin to make the charging experience more attractive. Take those big, busy Interstate travel centers, for example. You might see a bank of Superchargers there, off in the corner of a large parking lot, farthest from the bathrooms and the food court, just bare bones without even a canopy to shield drivers from the weather while they’re hooking up for a charge. Although, based on what I saw a few months ago, the charging cables can make fun sort of swing for an inventive toddler on the loose.

Into this picture steps the IONNA consortium with a model for public fast charging stations that puts the driver experience front and center. “IONNA combines the forces of BMW, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota,” CleanTechnica noted in February, when IONNA announced that it was satisfied with the beta-testing stage of the venture (see more IONNA charging station background here).

At its launch, IONNA had already settled on a retro style aesthetic, aiming to attract and reassure EV drivers with a brand identity that harks back to the olden days but with an updated approach resembling a nicely styled airport lounge.

Apparently not taking any chances, last year IONNA also launched a five-month competitive search for a brand creation and design partner. Last week, the competition concluded with the selection of VML.

VML Dives Into EV Charging

AdWeek reporter Kathryn Lundstrom has the rundown on the new partnership, which already has a kind of Trekkie feel about it.

Citing Robb Smigielski, chief design officer and executive lead of brand design at VML, Lundstrom observed:

“In developing the brand identity for Ionna, VML created a lexicon around EV charging that he hopes will become part of the culture as more people buy electric cars. The stations are rechargeries, the chargers are ‘geniune Ionna charge dispensers,’ and EV owners who use the stations are ‘Ionnians.’”

“Ionna is automakers’ first significant effort to challenge Tesla’s dominance in EV charging, and it’s coming in an era when many people are distancing themselves from Tesla CEO Elon Musk,” Lundstrom added. “Currently, Tesla’s network makes up a majority of the fast chargers available across the country (it’s currently at 58%, according to research and analysis firm EVAdoption).”

“If Ionna can make good on its promise, it could offer an alternative,” she emphasized. “The retro feel of the branding alludes to a community-centric, almost utopian vision of American life, marrying old-school Route 66 vibes to a clean energy future and shooting for the brand obsession people have for regional gas station chains like Buc-ee’s or Wawa.”

You Had Me At Wawa…

If you have personal knowledge of the Buc-ee’s experience, drop a note in the comment thread. I can only speak to Wawa, which is legendary in my neck of the woods.

The point is that, unlike the serendipitous truck stops of those olden days, modern travel centers have become places to linger and enjoy the amenities, including clean bathrooms, a wide variety of familiar food options, and Wi-Fi.

“In partnership with VML, the brand launch of IONNA takes a novel approach, using nostalgic design elements that were drawn from America’s automotive past and retro service station brands,” VML elaborates. “Nostalgic elements imbue comfort and familiarity and inject a sense of joy and charm lacking in the EV charging category today.”

“We wanted to launch IONNA – a charging network – that looks to the past experience of service stations that made us smile and earned our trust by wrapping the experience in warmth, hospitality, and thoughtful design and craft a brand identity with familiar comfort and timeless optimism,” explains Smigielski.

IONNA’s Chief Product Officer Ricardo Stamatti also chipped in his two cents in a press statement. “In a world where all charging brands skew to either techno-cold or parking-lot-boring, designed for machines instead of the people who drive them, IONNA was created to reintroduce comfort and familiarity back into the open road.”

“To build a modern service station where we’d check your oil, for free, with a welcoming smile… If EVs had oil,” Stamatti noted.

Next Steps For EV Charging In The US

VML’s business-driven faith in the IONNA brand comes at a pivotal time for the expansion of public EV charging access in the US. Among other actions aimed at crippling the US auto industry in general and EV makers in particular, the thin-skinned, malevolently incompetent Commander-in-Chief who occupies the White House suspended the federally funded NEVI program aimed at building out the nation’s public fast charging network.

The IONNA consortium is a welcome effort to help make up for the lack of federal support for EV charging. If all goes according to plan, driver confidence in public EV charging will help keep the EV sales trend spiraling upwards.

Other private sector EV charging initiatives are also taking shape, particularly in the previously untapped market for home charging at multi-family residential buildings.

None of this is good news for Tesla, which has become a notable outlier in the EV sales trend here in the US and other key EV markets.

The Tesla brand has been on shaky ground for years, at least for those paying attention to the antics of Musk during the COVID outbreak and continuing on through to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 and his purchase of Twitter. After Musk applied his personal fortune to the election of President Trump and began running amok through the federal government, more people paid attention.

Don’t just take my word for it. “Tesla has essentially become a political symbol globally,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives in a widely reported post over the weekend. The well-known Tesla fan formerly pegged Tesla shares at $550, but slashed the outlook to $315.

Ouch!

Image (cropped): The IONNA EV charging consortium has a golden opportunity to provide EV drivers with public fast charging alternative to Tesla Superchargers, and they are not letting the brand reputation grass grow under their feet (courtesy of VLM).