FEATURE ELECTRIC VEHICLES
With the growing demand for greener
transport and low emission vehicles, we appreciate that we will see more electric cars using our facilities Tim Duke
Chargemaster, was launched in October last year, with the promise of 4,000 fully installed EV parking bays by the end of 2012, rolling out to approximately 100 towns and cities across the UK. Chargemaster recently went live with POLAR in Oxford, and its 64 points across the city giving the best ratio of charging points to population in European cities – one for every 2,500 residents. POLAR has adopted a small monthly subscription model, with a small charge each time a charging unit is used. ‘We are seeing a slowdown in public sector spending on Infrastructure, however, this is to be expected, says Neil Sharpe, sales director of ChargeMaster. ‘The UK government has done a respectable job in “seeding” the industry. It is the private sector that must take up the baton and move things forward. We feel we are doing this with our POLAR network and in working alongside innovative partners like Hertz, Telefonica, SSE, British Gas and ARUP.’
Park and charge
Car parks are, of course, a natural environment for car charging infrastructure. Both NCP and Britannia Parking have signed up for the POLAR network, with NCP aiming to provide electric car parking
facilities across its 800 UK car parks and Britannia Parking looking to offer EV services across its portfolio. Tim Duke, business development director
at NCP, commented: ‘With the growing demand for greener transport and low emission vehicles, we appreciate that we will see more and more electric cars using our facilities. To ensure that we are ready for the increasing popularity of EVs, we are partnering POLAR, who will install and maintain charging points across all of our car parks.’ Paul Gallagher, property director at Britannia Parking, said: ‘To lead the way in car parking services, we feel it is necessary to provide the latest innovations in charging solutions for electric vehicles. With every manufacturer soon to offer an electric or plug in hybrid vehicle we want to ensure that we can cater for all motorists’ requirements.’ London-based leading electric car charging company POD Point is another enterprise that’s busy spreading EV infrastructure across the country. It recently announced that it is introducing a pay as you go service with a network of around 620 charging points across the UK by the end of this year, growing to 2,000 charge points by the end of 2013. It currently supplies EV charging hardware and software solutions for a number of local authorities and private companies (as well as domestic equipment), and has been commissioned by the DfT to develop a central database of recharging points in the UK.
Hardware solutions
When it comes to selecting public charging point infrastructure, a wide range of solutions currently exist from a variety of manufacturers. These are designs to suit different requirements, working from the basic concept of a secure post with a socket for charging accessed by a secure tag to multiple charging points on one unit. Vandal-proofing is, of course, also a key requirement. The time required to charge EVs is another potentially off-putting element for some potential buyers. EVs take much longer than regular diesel and petrol vehicles to go from ‘empty’ to ‘full’, but this is being addressed too, with some of the fast charging hardware now available. A full charge from a ‘slow’ point using a standard 13 Amp supply
26 JUNE 2012
www.britishparking.co.uk
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