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Rocking down to Electric Avenue? Good luck charging your car By Reuters

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© Reuters. Tim Win is an Uber driver. He poses in a photograph with his Nissan Leaf fully-electric, which is plugged into a Trojan Energy on-street electric vehicle charging station. This was taken August 2, 2020, London. REUTERS/Nick Carey

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Tina Bellon, Nick Carey

LONDON (Reuters), – European cities and U.S. towns that want to get rid of combustion engines in the next fifteen years will need to first plug a charging hole for the millions who park cars along the street.

While electric vehicle sales in Europe are on the rise, in America there is still a problem with charging infrastructure.

Many times, cash-strapped local governments have other priorities that a kerbside system of charging stations which would allow owners ensure their EVs remain charged.

While this leaves an opportunity for the private sector to fill, it’s one on which few EV charging startup founders, many of whom have also been early adopters elsewhere, are focusing.

Hugh Mackenzie chief operating officer of Trojan Energy stated that it is difficult to address on-street residential charges.

Trojan developed a charger that is currently being tested in residential streets of two London boroughs. EV owners can insert their short poles into sockets embedded in the pavement to charge their cars.

Tim Win (Uber (NYSE:), driver) charges every day his Nissan Leaf (OTC) Leaf. He is currently using the Uber system in north London.

Win, 39, stated that “after I have been driving all day” and that he wanted to return home after charging up with an EV fast charger in a nearby location. However, Win said that he sometimes had to wait for over an hour to be charged.

One “cabbie” who uses one of London’s electric black taxis said to Reuters that he has to frequently drive between charging stations, losing his valuable business, and then finding out they have either been used or are malfunctioning.

COST CURB

As with the deployment of ultra-fast broadband fibre optic cable, on-street urban charging will be expensive.

Because they need grid connections, solutions like Trojan’s can be expensive. Because there is not enough EV owners yet to guarantee a rapid return on investment, 75% of them are subsidized in Britain.

Trojan’s chargers were approximately £7,000 ($9,520) in cost. Mackenzie estimates that this can be reduced to 4,500 pounds for private investors.

It still needs to be approved by the local authority.

Travis Allan from Quebec City’s FLO vice president for public relations said that the most important factor to determine whether or not kerbside charging works is whether or not there is an engaged municipal government. FLO has placed at least 7,000 chargers in Canadian cities and in U.S. states.

Even Brent, a local authority that is engaged in lamp-post chargers and other solutions for the community, lacks cash.

Brent council transportation planner Tim Martin said that rapid chargers can cost up to 15,000 pounds while lamp post chargers will set you back around 2000 pounds. So subsidies are your only hope.

    “The prospect of being able to fund them ourselves out of our own budgets is practically zero,” Martin said.

According to charging startup char.gy, there are approximately 5-10 million vehicles in London, according to parking permits and car registrations. Around 76% of these cars park on the streets.

The total figure for Britain’s 33,000,000 vehicles is approximately 40%, according to Government statistics. In America, 40% do not own single-family homes or garages.

The rise in car sharing may decrease the demand for street charging but it’s not clear how.

Richard Stobart, Chief Executive of Char.gy estimates that Britain will require half a million street chargers before 2030 when half the country’s vehicles should be electric. Char.gy has around 1000 on-street chargers for lamp posts in Britain, which cost about 1,800 to install.

Stobart stated that while government subsidies are available, Stobart noted that local authorities sometimes lack the necessary resources.

“So they just dabble and it takes forever,” said he.

Ubitricity is a Royal Dutch Shell business (LON.) and the British market leader. There are just 4,000 charging stations using lamp posts. If they are near enough to the curb, the lamps use LED lamps. This will allow you to fully charge your EVs overnight.

According to Lex Hartman (CEO of ubitricity), public charging will be required by around 60% European car owners in densely populated areas.

Hartman explained that you’ll need to charge your devices everywhere, whether you are at home or at work.

He said, “If there is no infrastructure then people won’t hesitate to purchase an electric vehicle unless forced to.”

Hartman stated that Europe boasts more than 90 million lampposts, and millions can be used to charge them. Hartman also owns the Berlin lamp post charging network.

A spokesperson for the European Commission stated that urban chargers are essential in convincing consumers to switch to electric vehicles. It has created an expert group to help cities plan how they can be deployed.

The ‘PAINFUL EVIDENCE’

Some cities have to face huge challenges.

New York set the goal that all passenger cars and light duty trucks will be emission-free by 2035.

New York City has only 1,580 plugs to charge cars that use street parking.

Paul Suhey co-founded electric scooter sharing company Revel and launched New York’s first fast charging hub.

New York commissioned an April study that estimated the cost of electrifying transportation.

Los Angeles has more chargers than any other U.S. metro. Last year, Blink Charging bought BlueLA city-run EV carsharing network BlueLA. BlueLA has 100 cars and 200 charging stations.

Michael Farkas CEO at Blink said that while local governments want to install charging infrastructure as widely as possible in order to encourage people from buying EVs to use them, companies are unable to afford to make the necessary investments.

Farkas explained that “you can’t have a dream field, it’s impossible to make ends meet.”

Even though Norway has state support, it is still difficult to implement street charging.

    Oslo subsidizes larger public chargers and rapid chargers, investments that pay off within three to six years, Sture Portvik, who heads up its charging infrastructure efforts, said.

However, charging is not possible for those car owners that do not have designated parking. This will make it difficult for them to access their cars even in areas where they expect bans on the use of fossil-fuel vehicles in the future.

    “It’s extremely important that everybody, regardless of their economic background, gets to be a part of the green shift,” Portvik said. Portvik said, “And they must because they’ll have to sell their diesel cars in the next few years.”

($1 = 0.7354 pounds)

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