UK quick to adopt EV charging stations
April 17, 2009 by Matt Brogan
As part of its £250 million (A$519 million) initiative to covert British drivers to green motoring by 2011, the UK Department for Transport today announced an intention to provide £20 million (A$41.5 million) for electric vehicle charging points and related infrastructure.
The Brits have been quite proactive in adopting EVs and related technology since installing their first charging station in central London back in 2006. Next month London will see the opening of its 100th EV charging station.
Currently an additional 60 charging stations exist around the UK.
Having ample infrastructure and a government that contributes up to £5000 (A$10,400) toward the cost of buying an electric or plug-in electric hybrid vehicle is helping with the UK’s plans to move more motorists towards zero emission motoring, but have they done enough to call themselves “green” or is the contribution a token effort.
Either way, we can only sit back and wonder when Australia’s powers that be will follow suit.
Print it: 
They have to start somewhere. Of course people will ask whether this is merely a token effort, but even petroleum fuel filling stations started out in small numbers, so it’s an irrelevant question really. Of course then there’s the old argument that someone is bound to bring up – where does the electricity come from and is this really contributing to lowering emissions if you have to burn coal to get the electricity?
But on the initiative & technology itself it looks simple, easy and with government investment there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work.
The UK does not rely on coal burning power stations for it’s electricity supply. A pretty decent percentage is from Nuclear, wind, hydro and some others.
The only real issue I have with the UK’s EV incentive is that its very solution targetted rather than goal targetted. IE Do you want to promote cleaner cars or do you want to promote EV cars? EV cars are one method of reducing average CO2 emissions, but to help only EV and hybrid cars discriminates against conventional and hydrogen (and potentially other) technologies which might evolve to be just as green, at least as a system.
Mister Two, a quick search on the web found this information which doesn’t exactly support your statement:
“By 2004, total electricity production in the UK stood at 382.7 TWh (up 23.7% compared to 309.4 TWh in 1990), generated from the following sources:[9]
gas – 39.93% (0.05% in 1990)
coal – 33.08% (67.22% in 1990)
nuclear – 19.26% (18.97% in 1990)
renewables – 3.55% (0% in 1990)
hydroelectric – 1.10% (2.55% in 1990)
imports – 1.96% (3.85% in 1990)
oil – 1.12% (6.82% in 1990) ”
So although coal fired power usage has been halved since 1990, it is still supplying 1/3 of the UK electricity requirements, and another third is met by gas, another emission causing method. So only 1/5 to 1/4 is actually produced by other means, including nuclear.
In addition, they are building more coal-fired power stations to plug the energy gap:
“The first move to plug the UK’s energy gap was the June 2006 announcement by Centrica that they would proceed to construct the conventionally gas-fired Langage Power Station. In 2007, proposals for the construction of two new coal-fired power stations were announced, in Tilbury, Essex and in Kingsnorth, Kent. If built, they will be the first coal-fired stations to be built in the UK in 20 years.”
Seems they still have a way to go in not relying on coal-fired power stations if they are building more, wouldn’t you think?
I wonder how Mr. Bean would go hooking up his Mini?
Tom, i should think they would extend this to Hydrogen when it becomes available. Currently where can you go to by a Hydrogen car in the UK? or anywhere for that matter.
i read in a wheels mag a couple of months ago that a company called Better Place is in stalling these stations along the east coast by 2011. They are trying us first because they say our east c=oast represents Americas west coast and r using us as test dummies. But that gud for us as Mitsu has got approval for the iMiev and Hyundai are bringing the i10 with electricity as its power source.
This charging station thing doesn’t seem to be such a good thing, although its not as dumb as owning an electric car.
Example 1; You get to work 1 morning at say 8:30 am and plug your electric vehicle into the charging station, and are going to leave it their till u finish work about 5pm, that should be a good charge.
Now at 8:45 am a teenager on their way to school decides to be immature (as some teenagers are) and pull the power cord out of your car and leave it their.
At 5pm u get to your car get ready ot set of, just to find that ur either really low on power, or got no electricity left at all. Now wouldn’t that be a day.
Example 2; a bunch of theives use the charging station, to steal electricity either to their homes or decide to watch TV, listen to music, play ps3 out on the street
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