A design consultancy and the Royal College of Art have been commissioned to work on a new look for Britain’s charging points
Electric car charging points will be redesigned this year to make them “iconic and recognisable” like red phone boxes or London’s black taxis, the Government has announced.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has commissioned the design firm which made the Evian bottle, and the Royal College of Art, to come up with a new design which will be unveiled at the COP26 climate conference in the autumn and eventually used for up to two million charging points.
Most car charging points are likely to be installed by private firms or local councils, meaning the central Government cannot directly control their design. But the Department for Transport believes that by setting the new design as the default and providing a blueprint for free online, it will encourage its adoption more widely.
SWARCO eVolt is supplying 45 charging units, including 11 of its Rapid Chargers capable of charging two vehicles simultaneously in 30 minutes, across 28 sites in East Lothian (Image: eVolt)
A large number of people who own electric cars are believed to charge them at home, but a public network is seen as essential to ensure that drivers can abandon petrol-powered vehicles entirely, including for long journeys. There are now 25,000 public charging points across the UK, meaning that no road is more than 25 mile from one.
However, the country remains a long way off from the targets which experts say will be needed to enable the wide-scale adoption of electric cars. The Government’s own climate advisers estimated that at least 150,000 charging points would be necessary, centre-right think-tank Policy Exchange put the figure at 400,000 and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders suggested as many as 2.3 million charging points were required.
Read more: inews
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