'Leccy car plug map keeps greenies juiced up

The UK Ministry of Transport is drawing up a map of plug-in points for electric cars in order to make it easier for the drivers of battery-buggies to charge up their vehicles.

The database of charge locations will be developed by POD Point – a UK-based chargepoint manufacturer – and will be whizzed up into a map, the Ministry of Transport announced today.

There will be a new unified payment system too – The Central Whitelist – which will let drivers register once and charge up as and where they need to. "This freedom to roam between charging schemes is a very important step forward for the plug-in vehicle market," Transport Minister Norman Baker said.

The ministry hopes that the information will be built into satnav and mobile apps too, so that drivers will be able to access the information from different places.

Business Minister Mark Prisk added in a canned statement:

"The National Chargepoint Registry delivers our commitment to make it easier for motorists considering ultra low carbon cars to access charge points and so encourage their take-up."

POD has just been selected as the database developer, an £89k contract that requires them to find the data, host it on a server, and create systems that will allow plug-in vehicle recharging schemes to easily upload and download information. The Whitelist will share payment details between the operators of different charge-point networks.

POD declare that neither of the systems will store data of a personal nature (such as names, addresses or bank details). ®