Government to invest 37 Million on solar, high speed and wi fi charging for Electric vehicles
How will this impact the progress of Electric Vehicles over the upcoming years? Find out more below.
The Government have recently announced its plans to invest £37 million into British engineering in an endeavour to transform the electric chargepoint infrastructure.
Twelve development projects have already been set in motion and are to receive the £37m investment to revolutionise the experience of owning an electric vehicle in the UK. These projects are supporting the creation of innovations such as wireless charging technologies, meaning electric vehicles of the future could potentially charge without needing to plug in a cable.
This investment is aiming to ensure that the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles is reliable as possible. It will strive to be innovative in nature to encourage more people to join the record numbers of ultra-low emission vehicle users already across the UK. The investment comes on the anniversary of the governments Road to Zero strategy, which has already increased the use of battery electric vehicles by 60% compared to the same period in 2018. The Road to Zero strategy had measures in places to clean up road transport and lead the world in developing, manufacturing and using zero emission road vehicles. Since this strategy has been in place, the government have funded multiple schemes to increase the volume of zero emission cars on the UK roads.
Urban Foresight, a small city consultancy, has been awarded over £3 million along with Urban Electric, to demonstrate their ‘pop-up’ charging hubs. Theses hubs are to be installed into the pavement to provide a discreet, safe and low-cost charging solution for electric vehicle drivers who don’t have access to off-street parking like driveways or garages.
Char.gy, an electric charging company whose main goals include making electric vehicle charging as simple as charging a phone, have been awarded over £2.3 million to develop and deploy a wireless charging technology on residential streets. Their charging points are set to be out of sight, designed to become a part of already existing structures such as lamp posts.
Richard Stobart, CEO of Char.gy, said: "Our consortium is delighted to be funded by Innovate UK to demonstrate induction charging on residential streets in Milton Keynes, the London Borough of Redbridge and Buckinghamshire County.
“Working in collaboration with the Open University and The University of Warwick’s WMG we are excited to show that our ability to retrofit to existing electric vehicles and enable several parking bays per lamp column without the need for cables will accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles.”
As well as these two main charge point developments that are already underway, there are several other future projects to receive a part of the funding. These are projects such as:
- Renovation Project: Installing charge points into car parks to allow mass charging overnight.
- Virgin Media Project: Leveraging existing Virgin Media physical and online infrastructure to deliver a cost-effective and nationwide charging, using high speed internet connections for shareable online information on the charging progress and parking spaces.
- Advanced Electronics Project: The development of a semi-rapid charging which will use a low power grid connection, minimising the need for costly substation upgrades.
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