News analysis Courting success
Gridserve has opened its second Electric Forecourt charging site as its nationwide investment programme continues apace. Sean Keywood reports.
E
V charging firm Gridserve has opened its second dedicated Electric Forecourt facility, as part of a £1bn UK-wide investment in
charging infrastructure.
The new site in Norwich features 22 350kW chargers, eight 250kW Tesla Superchargers, and six low-power AC chargers, along with facilities from retailers such as Costa Coffee, M&S Food, and WH Smith, bookable meeting facilities, and opportunities to talk to ‘EV Gurus’ about charging and leasing options, with EV test drives soon to also be offered from the site via Gridserve Car Leasing. The Norwich forecourt follows the opening of the first such site in Braintree in 2020, and the company eventually plans to have more than 100 such facilities across the country.
That’s in addition to its developing network of charger hubs at motorway service stations, following on from Gridserve having taken over the Electric Highway network from Ecotricity last year, and recently completed a programme to replace all the pre-existing chargers it inherited.
Speaking to Business Car at the opening of the Norwich site, CEO Toddington Harper explained that the Electric Forecourt network would primarily serve a different purpose to the standard range of motorway chargers.
He said: “Think of a petrol car – you fill it up mostly at your local petrol forecourt. What this [site] does is it fills that similar role, and most of the time it’s people in the Norwich area that are going to be using it. “There does happen to be a lot of people who go past the door because we are also next to very busy roads, but that is principally the function, and that then serves businesses and individuals in the local area. It is also essential that we think about people who don’t have the ability to charge at home.
“Then, for when people are travelling on a journey, we put hubs in locations that are already suitable – where you can get a coffee – that are reasonable places to hang out and provide a good experience while vehicles are charging. And it’s a combination of hubs and forecourts that creates an overall network that we’re focused on.”
Fleets adopting EVs are often advised to plan around using mainly home and workplace charging, but Harper believes public chargers are in fact the most useful for businesses.
He said: “If people are taking vehicles home at night, that’s great, home charging is clearly a good idea. If you are going on a long-distance journey, then you need to have charging en route, and we’re putting in electric hubs, with six or 12 very high- powered chargers.
“That’s very useful, because if you are looking at the business sector, businesses don’t want their people queueing for charging – that’s not a very efficient use of corporate time.
“So, putting chargers in where people can charge very quickly en route is essential. And equally if you are serving a particular area, which is what Electric Forecourts do, then it means businesses who principally inhabit that local area can transition their entire fleet to electric very quickly and cost-effectively.”
Harper cited the example of a Royal Mail depot near the first Electric Forecourt in Braintree, which he said was electrifying
based solely on Gridserve’s facility. He said: “They are not spending a pound on charging infrastructure. They don’t have to do any of that complexity that we have had to in relation to grid connections or this and that, they’ve just gone and ordered 70-odd vehicles.
“All of them charge exclusively at our Electric Forecourt, and it works very well for them. If we didn’t have an Electric Forecourt in the area, they wouldn’t have
8 | May 2022 |
www.businesscar.co.uk
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