Ever wanted to use a public on-street electric vehicle charging station only to realise there’s an ICE vehicle in the way? EVision have the solution!
Lets set the scene!
The problem with on-street electric vehicle charging
You’ve hired your electric vehicle from EVision, you’ve played your part in making the world a little greener, you’re feeling pleased with yourself (as you should be). The next thing you do is go on a really nice long drive to fully enjoy the car of your choice.
While out on the road you notice that you need to charge your car. You can’t charge at home as you don’t have off road parking, so you’re relying on a public charge point, preferably a roadside charge point near you.
Finding an on-street charge point shouldn’t be a problem due to the council adding a lot of them in the road next to you. Unfortunately, when you get there you see that the charge points are all blocked by petrol and diesel cars who have parked there for the night!
The issues involved
The problems here are actually threefold. Firstly, you have to suspend disbelief that a local council has installed plenty of on-street charge points close to where you live. Secondly, you have drivers of petrol and diesel cars blocking the charge points that you as an electric vehicle driver need. And thirdly, petrol and diesel cars are going to be around for at least ten years after the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles comes into force.
So who can address these issues and when will it likely happen?
Electric vehicle on-street charge points
Many of you will have seen some absolutely brilliant on-street charging innovation in the last couple of years. However, it is unlikely you will have seen any of them in the wild outside of London or the other major hubs.
Local councils are, however, taking this seriously and are working with some great companies to introduce public charging to residential streets and car parks. This has been really noticeable, particularly in the last couple of years. Medway Council in Kent, where the EVision Electric Vehicles Head Office is based, have been working with a company called Connected Kerb. Together they have started rolling out charge points in public car parks and are now looking to expand to residential streets.
With the Covid pandemic (sorry) the rollout has been delayed somewhat unfortunately. However, with just 8 years until the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars, there is a sense of great urgency to ramp up the rollout. This will certainly be needed if the UK is to get close to the target of 325,000 public charge points by the end of this decade.
So, although we would like more on-street charging now, we will see it coming out in force over the next few years.
Blocked Again!
How many of us have been to a charge point in a car park or elsewhere only to find an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle in the spot for car charging? I know that not everyone has suffered with this issue, but it is an issue that already affects so many of us. There is a good reason why apps have an option of telling others about ICEd charge points. It’s frustrating and it is not something that bothers the ICE car driver as there is no real deterrent to stop them doing it.
Here at EVision, we have thought long and hard about this issue and about how it is going to get even more problematic as on-street charge points are rolled out and more electric cars are on the road in the next few years. More on this later.
Petrol and diesel cars will be no more in 8 years anyway… right?
Unfortunately, this is wrong. Yes, the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned in 2030. However, the average lifespan of a car is around 10 years. There will probably be petrol and diesel cars on the road long beyond 2040 as well.
The BBC brought out an interesting article in 2021 which suggested that petrol stations will fall into a death spiral over the next few years. The reason being that the more electric cars there are on the road, the fewer petrol stations will be able to continue making a profit and will therefore close, and the more petrol stations close the more likely that people are to buy an electric vehicle, so on and so forth. The death spiral is predicted to be very quick.
With all the data we have it is likely that the misinformed few and the classic car enthusiasts will be the last ones stubbornly holding onto their ICE vehicles. Unfortunately for them it is likely that they will be paying an absolutely exorbitant rate for their fuel, and they will probably have to rely on specialist deliveries as petrol stations disappear forever.
How can we stop ICE cars blocking charge points?
So we can see that ICE cars will be around for some time yet. This, unfortunately, means that the issue of car charging points being ICEd will remain for some time yet as well. At least until the charge points outnumber the number of ICE cars on the road. So what can be done?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, here at EVision Electric Vehicles we have been banging our heads together (not literally) and believe we have come up with a possible solution to the problem. Even if it is not successful in the way we would like, it would still raise a lot of awareness of the issue and maybe force someone in power to do something.
EVision has created not one but two petitions to try and get change made. We would like to see the introduction of double green lines in front of on-street charge points, with fines comparable to those for parking on double yellow lines. The double green lines will be only for electric vehicles parking to charge, of course. If electric vehicles were just allowed to park on them then we haven’t really solved a problem, just created a new one. Of course, we would expect EV drivers to know the charge point etiquette a bit better than an ICE car driver.
We need your support!
Now you know what we are doing to try and make a difference for the whole EV community. We really would love your support to get the petitions over the line so they can get in front of those who are the key decision makers. Since the launch of our campaign we have had some serious interest from high level people; however, we cannot divulge too much as yet.
To sign our petition on the Change.org website, please click on our link here.
To sign our petition on the parliament petitions website, please click on our link here.
Obviously we would love for you to sign both petitions. Even if you can just sign one that would be a great help and one we greatly appreciate. We would also be most grateful if as many of our readers could share these links with family and friends. Let’s spread the message. Let’s be the change we need.
* All information correct as of 23/02/2022.
