Electric travel plans
11 June 2021
It’s been some time since my last update on the progress that Pete Beach is making with his new electric vehicle. The occasional series has aroused much interest as he is a high-mileage driver, with his job as sales and marketing manager with Genquip Groundhog taking him all over the country.
Pete tells me he has now settled into a routine for his visits to the welfare cabin manufacturer’s factory in Neath from his Sheffield home – a round trip of approximately 420 miles which is in practice beyond the limits of his Jaguar iPace on a single charge.
“I now recharge the car on each leg of the journey, either at Hopwood Services on the M42 or at a Morrisons supermarket in Ross-on-Wye, which are both reasonably convenient,” he tells me, adding that it will be interesting to see how he gets on when he starts travelling more frequently to different locations. “The quality and scale of the charging infrastructure still have to be improved, though.”
Certainly, every day there seems to be an announcement about new facilities being constructed. Bp pulse, which specialises in providing charging points, has opened a new hub in London’s Park Lane, the first of many it intends to open in cities across Europe for use by Uber drivers and selected fleet customers.
The facility can provide 50kW rapid charging for ten vehicles simultaneously and bp pulse plans to more than double its capacity in the coming months.
Richard Bartlett, bp’s senior vice president for future mobility & solutions, said: “London anticipates that by 2025 taxis and private hire vehicles will account for 80% of all public charging demand in the city.”
Uber says it intends to electrify all cars on its app in London by 2025 and this is indicitative of the interest in sustainable travel.
Hopefully similar facilities will be rolled out quickly in other parts of the country for all users, so that drivers like Pete can travel with less uncertainty about recharging en route.
Picture shows an artist’s impression of a BP Chargemaster station.
