Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, together with London Councils and TfL, has announced a £4 million investment into electric vehicle (EV) charging points as part of the Office for Low Emission Vehicles’ (OLEV) Go Ultra Low City Scheme.

The investment will see 1,000 new charge points installed across the 29 boroughs, in residential areas. This will build on the 1,500 charge points already installed across the capital.

The scheme is a nationwide program to tackle climate change and improve air quality using EVs. London has received £13 million from the scheme, which will aid the city in reaching Khan’s goal of 80% of journeys using public transport, cycling or walking as opposed to petrol and diesel vehicles.

Christina Calderato, TfL’s head of transport strategy and planning, said:

“We know that a comprehensive network of charging points is essential if we are to persuade drivers to ditch polluting diesel vehicles and swap them for electric alternatives. Installing a 1,000 more residential charging points across the capital means more Londoners can plug their vehicle in while at home, even if they don’t have a driveway.

“For those that need to charge up in 20-30 minutes, London is one of the leading world cities for rapid charge points. The addition of the east hub in Stratford is the first super charging facility, allowing drivers easy access and convenient methods of payment.”

As part of the wider announcement, Engenie has unveiled a rapid EV charging hub at Stratford International Station car park, which it claims is the first in London.

Read more: Current News

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A ‘GLOBALLY significant’ project installing electric car charging points in lampposts, bollards and homes across Oxford has published its first key findings.

The Go Ultra Low Oxford scheme saw 46 charge points installed at 28 residential sites and the use of 10 electric cars from Oxford’s Co-Wheels car club.

As well as 29 lampposts in 11 streets, three types of bollard chargers were included at four sites, five households were provided with a home charger, and the car club deployed ten electric vehicles across Oxford, each with an allocated parking bay close to a charger.

A total of 18 residents took part in the pilot from July 2017 to June 2019.

It is thought to be the first on-street charging pilot of its size in the world.

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Key findings from the report include:

• Charging habits varied widely between users, with some regularly charging overnight, and others plugging in during the day or more often on weekends. These factors varied according to how people used their cars.

• Participants’ charging practices changed over time, as they became familiar with the equipment.

• However, when asked whether they had a preference for any of the charger types, two-thirds of respondents chose the technology that they had been allocated – expressing a preference for that above the other four that were trialled.

Read more: Oxford Mail

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When a few months ago ExxonMobil’s chief executive questioned the value of electric vehicles that are powered mostly by coal, he came up empty.

His argument: if such automobiles are juiced by electricity generated by coal, then the net value to the environment is zero and the whole movement is thus a way to make environmentalists feel good. Exxon, of course, is not a disinterested party. But folks who buy into Woods’ outdated line are missing key points. Coal-fired electricity is waning, and now provides just a quarter of the power mix, down from 50% a decade ago. Meanwhile, improvements in battery technology are making EVs ever more efficient and clean.

Ryan Cornell of Harvard University says that a traditional car using the internal combustion engine (ICE) will emit about 69 metric tons of CO2 over a lifetime, or 150,000 miles. But an electric vehicle (EV) powered 100% by coal will emit 66 metric tons of CO2 over the same time period, he figures. Given that nearly every grid in America hosts a number of fuel sources, that’s a conservative figure.

“The lifecycle EV carbon emissions for a vehicle powered by the 2016 US grid is 30.82 metric tons, while the emissions for an EV powered by 100 percent renewable energy is 6.3 metric tons,” writes Cornell. “An average internal combustion engine vehicle (25.4 miles per gallon) is responsible for 68.38 metric tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, while an ICE vehicle with a utopian efficiency of 80 miles per gallon accounts for 25.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide.”

Read more: Forbes

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A persistent concern among some EV drivers is the long-term health of the battery.

All batteries lose some storage capacity over time. But how might that degradation affect your driving range a few years down the line? To help answer that question, we can now look to Geotab, a leading telematics-fleet-management company with access to a lot of EVs. Lo and behold, the losses are minor.

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Here’s a quick rundown of what the data revealed:

1. If current degradation rates are maintained, the vast majority of batteries will outlast the usable life of the vehicle.
2. The average decline in energy storage is 2.3% per year. For a 150-mile EV, you’re likely to lose 17 miles of accessible range after five years.
3. EV batteries decline in a non-linear fashion. There’s an early drop, but the rate of decline slows down in subsequent years.
4. Liquid-cooled batteries decline slower than air-cooled packs. Geotab saw that a 2015 Tesla Model S with liquid cooling had an average annual degradation rate of 2.3%, compared to an air-cooled 2015 Nissan Leaf’s rate of 4.2%.

Read more: Electrek

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Are retractable points ideal for on-street electric car charging?

ONE OF the chief obstacles to mass uptake of electric cars is being addressed in trials of “pop-up” charging points, designed for use in residential areas by drivers who have no access to off-street parking.

Oxford City Council will assess the viability of the new type of charging point in a pilot programme that will run until February 2020.

Urban Electric, which manufactures the “OxPop” charging points, says the system allows electric car drivers to “charge conveniently overnight in the street where you live”.

While the power of the charging points won’t set the pure-electric world alight (the 7kW output is similar to that of a domestic wall box charger), its advantage is in being able to retract into the ground when not in use, thereby reducing pavement clutter. The maker says this means pedestrians and wheelchair users on narrow footpaths won’t have to navigate around fixed charging points when they’re not in use.

Oxford City Council says the retractable nature of the points also means they negate the need for parking spaces reserved only for electric vehicles.

While the OxPops will be free to use during the trial period, only local residents who have successfully applied to take part in the pilot programme will have access to them. The council has also secured the use of a pure-electric BMW i3 city car for the duration of the trial, in order to ensure people who “are not ready to lease or purchase an electric car outright” can still participate.

Read more: Driving

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A new Conservative government would plough an additional £500 million into EV charging infrastructure and new electric vehicles, ensuring there was a chargepoint within 30 miles of each home in England and Wales.

That was the central pledge within Conservative leader Boris Johnson’s latest election speech, delivered late Wednesday afternoon, alongside increased investment in R&D and a ramp-up of offshore wind development.

Campaigning for next month’s General Election started in earnest this week, with Johnson delivering a speech at the London Electric Vehicle Company’s manufacturing facility in the West Midlands, a speech billed as one highlighting the Tories’ proposed ‘Green Revolution’.

“Here in the West Midlands – the home of the first industrial revolution – we are seeing a new industrial revolution, a green industrial revolution, creating thousands of jobs of environmentally sustainable technologies and thousands of jobs,” said Johnson.

Much of the talk centred on the damage Brexit hesitancy has caused for the energy sector and more broadly investment, saying “we have to get Brexit done because it is also the best thing for the economy.”

While not explicitly mentioned within Johnson’s speech, further detail supplied by the Conservative Party detailed an additional £500 million of funding for electric vehicles and associated infrastructure, coming on top of the £400 million Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund (CIIF) that is up and running.

Read more: Current News

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