Latest Update On Electric Vehicles

Friday, 5. August 2016

Electric vehicle sales continue to increase with a constant stream of new developments coming from manufacturers and providers of charging points and batteries. On the downside Electrocity, the providers of rapid charge points at motorway services, have announced a new charging scheme for those using their rapid chargers.

In future they will charge £6 per half hour to charge your car, currently provided for free. Whilst some believe this move to be premature others feel that it won’t affect electric vehicle sales as drivers only tend to use motorway fuel stations as a quick fix, waiting till they are off the motorway to fill up.

The same will apply to electric chargers. At the moment the charging points can be a little congested but by charging for charging (did I just say that) drivers will no doubt plan their journeys better. Another charge point provider, Chargemaster, is developing inductive charging, the same type of wireless connection that is used to boil our kettles. They claim that they can charge up to 10 plus cars at any one time at the workplace.

Mercedes are developing inductive charging for their cars and will be rolling out the first car to have it fitted, the S Class Hybrid, in 2018. The system will then filter down to the cheaper models. Technology giant Qualcomm, who licence the technology to Chargemaster, claim that the next generation of EV’s will have both methods available, inductive and the traditional plug in.

Formula E, the electric car racing series already use inductive charging for their medical and safety cars. So the system is already proven. For those worried about the safety of such devices when say a cat or dog walks onto the pad, that would be placed under the car at home, the unit stops charging and an alert is sent to your smart device.

I still can’t understand why the industry doesn’t standardise batteries with a quick swap facility at battery centres, you pull in, the old battery is slid out with the charge noted, a fully charged battery is slid in and the driver is charged for the difference in charge. Simples. Maybe I should patent this idea! By Graham Hill

Share My Blogs With Others: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • MisterWong
  • Y!GG
  • Webnews
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Alltagz
  • Ask
  • Bloglines
  • Facebook
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • TwitThis
  • Squidoo
  • MyShare
  • YahooBuzz
  • De.lirio.us
  • Wikio UK
  • Print
  • Socializer
  • blogmarks

Leave a Reply