The world’s first pop-up EV charge points are currently being trialled in a street in Oxford, UK.
The technology has been developed by product design company Duku and sister IP firm, Albright IP, in collaboration with Urban Electric. The trial, delivered in partnership with Oxford City Council, will take place over the next six months.
“Without access to charging points the electric car revolution could by-pass millions of people, particularly in the inner cities. Ironically, this demographic is also one of the most likely to use an electric car, with short commutes into local towns or to train stations. If you can solve this problem, then you open up a huge market opportunity to increase the uptake of EVs in every single town and city,”said Andrew Aylesbury, director, Duku.
Six prototype charge points have been installed as part of the project’s pilot stage. Users can book an electric car that has been made available for the period of the pilot.
“The project came with a huge number of challenges, from reducing visual ‘street clutter’ to the shallow amount of available depth below ground,” added Alex Lee, Director, Duku. “Cities such as Oxford have a lot of historical architecture and utilities under the pavement, so minimising the depth below the ground was one of the big challenges.
“At the same time, it needs to rise up to a certain level to make it accessible for everyone, so we worked hard to miniaturise its components while also creating a charge point that could rise up to 800mm above ground level.”
In addition, a range of sensors detect obstacles and monitor the performance of each charge point, reducing the chance of the charge point coming into contact with anything such as a parked car. Safety cut offs also ensure that the charge point does not power up until it detects that a car is connected.
Once retracted into the ground, the charge point sits flush with the pavement, preventing trip hazards, and is only visible by a ring of light that highlights its position and lets users know of its availability.
