In many places EV charging infrastructure is being massively expanded. But there are still some areas that are going to be difficult to bring chargers to. Especially in dense urban residential areas, where space can be more of a limiting factor than money. But one company in the UK might have a solution.
A trial of “pop-up” chargers in the UK has been deemed a success, as reported by Green Car Reports. Urban Electric installed these chargers last year, and they say people have been really satisfied with them.
They’re trying to solve a difficult problem, how do you get chargers to people who park on the street? It’s probably not the best idea to just have chargers sitting on the side of the road ready to be hit. And you can’t just obstruct the entire sidewalk either.
These chargers sit flush with the sidewalk when not in use. When activated they rise out of the ground to show a fully-featured EV charger. And it looks super cool.
We’ve previously taken a look at converting lamp posts into EV chargers. These have the added benefit of already being a power source, but these pop-up chargers could be a good alternative where that isn’t possible.
Both of these solutions have one thing in common, they both require the driver to supply the cable. When we talked about the lamp post chargers we focused on the implementation of the smart charging cable. I think the solution to all charging problems, both urban and rural, can be solved with a standard for these cables.
There are plenty of different charging standards out there. You can’t even use some chargers unless you have the right adapter. But what if all chargers had a standard port you could plug into? Then every car could have a universal adapter, that could work with every charger.
That will probably not happen unless government regulations force that kind of change. It makes sense that companies like Tesla would want to make their charging coverage a selling point of their cars. You can buy an adapter to use the Tesla Superchargers. But all gas stations work exactly the same, no matter who is selling you the fuel. So why shouldn’t Tesla just be okay with selling the power?
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