UK launches roadside EV charger design
The concept design launched today at the COP26 climate conference is focused on on-street charging, considering the 40 percent of the UK’s population who don’t have off-street parking. The charging rates vary, but are typically between 7 and 22kW for such systems supported by local power lines to streetlights, rather than 350kW fast chargers.
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“We built prototypes of the four most promising concepts and invited 16 different members of the public to participate in two face-to-face focus groups at our Global Innovation & Technology Centre. Here, they had the opportunity to try out the prototypes and vote for their preferred option,” said Dan Toon design and innovation expert at PA Consulting.
“We then further honed the four concepts and presented them to the steering board that was guiding the project, which included senior figures from engineering company Arup, the UK’s Design Council, Historic England, and University College London. After rigorous discussions with these independent experts and stakeholders, we took a single design concept forward. We built a full-sized prototype and accompanying set of design principles, which we launched at COP26,” he said.
“Our design concept provides a blueprint, which manufacturers can use in any context to create recognisable, user-friendly chargepoints. This will enable drivers to easily find and use any chargepoint regardless of its location, removing the need to grapple with different interfaces when they need to charge their car. Our hope is the chargepoint will become as recognisable as the postbox.”
However PA has not detailed the charger architecture or controller systems and software that would provide the ubiquitous, seamless charging requested.
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