If you have a garage with a power socket, an electric car makes an awful lot of sense. If you park on the street, however, the infrastructural challenge of keeping your electron-powered vehicle topped up becomes complicated enough that perhaps sticking to driving on squished dinosaurs makes sense for a while longer. Until Char.gy comes along, that is.
“Seventy-two percent of drivers in London don’t have off-street parking,” says Richard Stobart, CEO of the London-based Char.gy. “If you want an electric car, not being able to charge at home is a major disincentive.”
So, in a world where people want to drive electric cars, cities are trying to clean up the air and car makers want to sell electric cars, how do you take on the not insignificant challenge of charging car batteries in a dense and fast-moving city such as London? You tap into other, already existing infrastructure, of course.
“People want to charge their cars while they are doing something else, preferably when they are parked at home and asleep in their beds,”
Stobart points out, and offers a solution. The company has developed charge points that connect to the existing street furniture: Lampposts. Makes sense: The cables are already there, the local government owns them, and once you’ve gone that far, you may as well make the next couple of logical steps
Ford says US forces with fleets of more than a thousand vehicles will save millions of dollars a year using “gas-electric” cars.
US police will soon be saving the environment as well as fighting crime thanks to a new hybrid car powered by both petrol and batteries.
The car will be on the streets in 2018
The Ford Motor Company says its new Police Responder hybrid sedan – a modified Ford Fusion – is the first “gasoline-electric” car to be “pursuit rated”, which means it can race through city streets and navigate crowded areas or high kerbs.
The car averages 38 miles a gallon when driven in the city and on highways – more than twice that of the current Police Interceptor model.
Ford estimates police forces will save more than £2,000 on fuel for every car over a year, which would translate into savings of millions of pounds for forces with fleets of more than a thousand cruisers.
The new car, which was unveiled in New York and Los Angeles, will be on the streets in the summer of 2018 and can go from zero to 60mph in 8.7 seconds.
eVolt, the Electrical vehicle (EV) charging business, has launched its third-generation Rapid charger, the Raption 50, which uses modular power technology for enhanced reliability and performance. eVolt is the eMobility brand of the SWARCO Group.
Traditionally, Rapid chargers operate via a single power pack, rendering a charger out of use if the power unit fails. The Raption 50, however, uses state-of-the-art modular power technology with four individual power packs delivering 12.5kW each. Should one power pack fail, the Raption unit continues charging EVs at a lower output by drawing power from the functioning packs.
eVolt Raption Rapid Charge Point (image: eVolt)
The new unit completes an 80% charge in 30 minutes with simultaneous charging for two EVs at 50kW DC and 43kW AC. It is smaller and slimmer than its predecessors and has three charging cables that cater for every EV/PHEV model.
Justin Meyer, General Manager of eVolt UK, says reliability is key for Rapid charging:
“While eVolt’s Rapid units have always proved highly dependable, modular power technology makes them even more reliable by reducing the potential for down-time,”
he says.
“The new Raption 50 has been designed with input from our clients. This is one of the ways we make sure our chargers meet their needs.”
In adopting the modular architecture, the Raption range offers flexibility through scalable power:
“The Raption can be scaled down should a local power network not be capable of Rapid charging or if a user only needs to draw 25kW of power,”
Justin adds.
“At the same time the opposite can happen, and we can scale the chargers back up to deliver more power.”
Tesla will unveil an electric articulated lorry in September, chief executive Elon Musk has said.
Additionally, he said an electric pick-up truck would be shown off in around 18-24 months.
Tesla showroom (Image: T. Larkum)
Last year Mr Musk expressed the firm’s desire to branch out beyond cars.
However, analysts are concerned the company will not meet demand for its current projects.
The Model 3, a more mid-market car compared to what Tesla currently offers, has 400,000 pre-orders – vastly more than the company can manufacture in a year. It is due to go into production later this year.
However, despite this hurdle, investors seem confident that Mr Musk will meet his ambitious promises – Tesla’s surging stock price saw it briefly become the most valuable car maker in the US on Monday.
Speaking about the lorry, Mr Musk said his team had done an “amazing job” and the vehicle would be
“seriously next level”.
In a string of tweets sent out on Thursday, Mr Musk also said that the next version of its roadster sports car will be a convertible.
At Fuel Included we’re very pleased to be members of the Entrepreneurial Spark programme.
Our BMW i3 on display outside our office (Image: T. Larkum)
As part of this we have office space in the Milton Keynes Hub. It was natural therefore for our first electric car event in Milton Keynes to be a display outside the Hub building.
The centrepiece was our new BMW i3 94Ah on show. It generated a lot of interest, particularly amongst those visitors who had not seen an electric car up close before.
Naturally, we have plans for organising more MK events through this year – and you’ll read about them here first.
The first eVolt smart electric vehicle (EV) charge point has been installed at a residential property outside Nottingham for the Electric Nation trial, which is seeking to find a smart charging solution that will better manage local level power distribution at peak times.
Research suggests that some of the UK’s local electricity networks will need intervention to enable motorists to charge EVs at home at peak times. That research indicates at least £2.2bn would be needed for local electricity infrastructure upgrades.
Electric Nation Matt Tupper
Electric Nation is a Western Power Distribution (WPD) and Network Innovation Allowance funded project, and it is providing new electric car owners with a free smart charger. In return, the project will have access to charging data to help electricity distribution companies better manage electric vehicle charging.
Matt Tupper, who has had an eVolt smart charger installed for free at his house near Nottingham says:
“I believe that more and more people will be buying electric cars in the coming years, so it’s really important that we can all recharge them. I would certainly recommend anyone buying an electric car to sign up to the project.”
Dave A Roberts, Director of Smart Interventions at EA Technology, the business responsible for trialling the demand control system, and delivering an electricity network modelling tool that will enable WPD to identify which parts of their network are susceptible to EV loads and to assess solutions to avoid network reinforcement works, explains the challenge facing electricity distribution companies:
“Many local electricity networks serving our homes were never designed to cope with the demand from large numbers of high capacity electric vehicles,”
he says.
“To avoid costly and disruptive upgrading work to cables and transformers, a smart solution, as being trialled by Electric Nation, could provide a much cheaper option to ensure we can charge our EVs.”
Electric Nation Matt Tupper
Justin Meyer, General Manager of eVolt UK, emphasises the importance of working together to find a solution:
“The problem has been identified and the industry is coming together to find an appropriate and cost-effective resolution,”
he says.
“Electricity capacity has to develop side-by-side with EV and charge point innovations, and we are very happy to have been chosen as one of the two EV suppliers to enable this.”
The trial is seeking 500 – 700 members of the public to install a smart charge point on an ongoing basis to accurately measure charging levels, and eVolt, which is the eMobility brand of the SWARCO Group, is providing half of the trial’s chargers. All smart charging units are subsidised by OLEV eligible households are initially required to be within the bounds of WPD (South West, South Wales, and the Midlands.) OLEV grants are only available to people with an EV who have not previously received OLEV funding for a charge point for that vehicle.
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