Last year, in August 2017, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan announced a £4.5 million investment in electric car charging infrastructure across the capital. Each of the 25 London Boroughs will be able to bid for a share, which will finance 1,200 new charging points aimed at EV users without access to off-street parking. At the time there were fewer than 1,500 charging points within London, so this announced investment could result in nearly doubling the number of places where EV owners could recharge.
A recent update has revealed that 650 charge points have been installed since the start of 2017 putting London on target to have a total of nearly 2,700 by the end of 2018/19.
These, however, will be a mix of slow 3kw chargers, mainly attached to street lamp columns and fast chargers rated at between 6.7 and 22kw. There will also be a smaller number of rapid charging point capable of delivering power at 50kw and capable of delivering an 80% charge to a typical electric car in 35 minutes.
Chargemaster, which runs the Polar network and claims to be UK’s largest provider of EV charging infrastructure, plays a critical role in delivering many of the new points on behalf of Transport for London and the London Councils.
They are already providing over 70 rapid charge points within the M25 and also 18 rapid chargers within 2 miles of the M25 and never more than 1 juction away.
Last month Chargemaster announced that it is working with additional partners to install more charging points at private locations, such as hotels in the IHG and Accor groups and parking providers Q-park and intu.
David Martell, Chief Executive of Chargemaster, said: “Over the next two years, Chargemaster will be investing some £50m in the expansion of the POLAR network to ensure that it remains the most reliable and comprehensive charging network for electric vehicle drivers in the UK. The recent increase in provision within the M25 shows the speed of expansion that we will be maintaining to keep pace with the fast-growing electric car market.”