London to become Europe's e-car capital, says Mayor
Boris unveils very ambitious plans
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Leccy Tech London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced plans that he hopes will make the city the electric vehicle capital of Europe.
Boris Johnson announced his EV plans for London in Seoul
How will he achieve this miracle? Essentially by encouraging 100,000 EVs onto the city’s streets “as soon as possible” and by rolling out an e-car charging infrastructure to the tune of 25,000 charging points - all by 2015.
Johnson also announced plans to create a “Dedicated Electric Vehicle Centre of Excellence” (DEVCoE) within the Greater London Authority (GLA) to help deliver on his plan.
The DEVCoE will liaise with other member cities of the Climate Leadership Group – known as the C40 group – that are developing – or at least thinking about developing - EV infrastructures.
C40 member cities include Seoul – where Johnson made his announcement — Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Toronto, Delhi, Sao Paulo, Beijing and Sydney.
Only 2500 of the charging posts will be installed and funded directly by the GLA. The remaining 22,500 will come as a result of the GLA working “with the [London] boroughs and other partners”.
Further details of exactly what that means and, crucially, who’ll pay for the posts will follow in November.
What we do know is that the GLA-funded charging infrastructure will be broken down into three categories.
Slow - 13A, 240V - charge points able to charge a car over several hours. Around 70 will be installed in London Underground car parks, with another 84 in National Rail car parks and long-stay public car parks. By 2015 there should be 2000 of these.
Some 50 fast-charge points - defined as 32A, 240V three-phase supplies able to deliver a decent charge to an EV in roughly 30 minutes - will be scattered around London by 2012. Another 150 charge points are scheduled to arrive by 2015 – apparently putting every Londoner within three miles of one.
Finally, we have rapid charge points: 200A, 500V three-phase supplies able to top-up your Tesla S in five minutes flat. However, the potential of these posts is still being “investigated”.
A Tesla S could be topped-up at a London charge point in five minutes, under Boris' plans
There’ll also be a planning requirement to install e-car charging facilities in all new London developments.
On the vehicle side of things, the news is simply a re-hash of an announcement made back in April that the GLA fleet will include 1000 EVs by 2015.
The remaining 99,000 EVs will hit the road over the next six years, as a result of encouraging corporate and - presumably - private users to swap their petrol cars and vans for e-cars and leccy trucks.
To get this moving, incentives will include free parking and Congestion Charge exemption – both in addition to the government's £5000 ($7906/€5668) leccy car rebate that starts in 2011.
A report by analyst Frost and Sullivan has suggested that in order to promote widespread use of EVs, governments must “ensure the availability of at least four charging points per EV in the first year”.
If the analysis is correct then London alone will need 250,000 charge points by 2015, rather than the GLA's projected 25,000.
You can find Boris' full 35-page plan online (PDF). ®
COMMENTS
@Trucks and Vans
Pah! TNT have a couple in use in London already. I regularly see one around the Whitechapel/Aldgate area as I commute to work on my Vectrix electric scooter (not been in a petrol station on two wheels since June 2008). The tech works, and it is improving all the time. See here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/england/london/6199081.stm
What is disheartening about this London plan is that, yet again, it only focusses on Cars. PTWs do exist also and solve other problems than just pollution! But thumbs up to Bozzer for making the first steps, and throwing down the gauntlet. I've already picked it up, what about you lot?
AC@21:59
"but what about vehicles which require hundreds of times more torque? (Trucks, vans, semis, trains) I am, as of yet, unconvinced."
You are, as of yet, uninformed.
The torque curve for an electric motor can be a lot steeper than that of an IC engine. The mass of the rotor of even a large motor is likely to be substantially lower than the rotating bits of an IC engine (pistons, crankshaft, piston rods), much better balanced and therefore accelerate its vehicle better than an IC engine. The GM "Impact" project was designed to demonstrate that an EV could be a sports car even with lead-acid batteries.
Regarding trains pretty much every underground system in the world is electrically driven. Large locomotives typically distribute motors over several or all of their carriages.
It might help you to know that the UK has 4 companies either making electric commercial vehicles or electric vehicle conversions. IIRC One of them Smiths of Luton is in line to supply most of what will be Ford's US electric truck offering. Ford will no doubt do enough in country to earn the Made In USA sticker and attached federal funding.
AFAIK anything up to a large panel van (including pickup truck size) is available in some form of EV. No one has done an EV HGV. But then what is a goods train?
You may still be unconvinced. Your a little less uninformed.
Lets hope they all use the same plug
Otherwise we are looking at 3 *separate* charging networks across London. A complete mess.
While on the subject I hope Bozzer will ensure that a map of where these charge points are is readily available. Ideally for download to satnavs. But putting *some* of them at railway stations may be the most important part. Allowing people who don't have allocated off street parking (or a house) access to charging at work or at railway (or bus) station may be the key in getting people to take them up quickly. Making them a requirement for new developments will only help longer term (and it's likely developers will whine about the cost and try to avoid the obligation in the way they have with allocating some of their units for key workers)
Of course making cars that people want to buy or lease with a battery pack that can last 5 years (that's c3654 cycles given a 2 way trip each and every day ) is another.
But thumbs up for maybe getting something done.
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