What comes first, the chicken or the egg? This is a question often posed to young children to get them thinking about the sequencing of events and the concept of life in general. A similar question currently doing the rounds in the automotive and transport world is do we need recharge infrastructure before individuals will consider a Plug-In Vehicle from their next car choice? Certainly this dilemma has already come up in the past such as do we need roads before people will buy cars? Clearly this situation is not as black and white as it seems at first glance, we had roads, of a sort, before cars were invented. These roads simply had to be improved and expanded in order to meet the growing mobility requirements of an affluent car owning society. Similarly, we already have a well developed refuelling infrastructure for conventional cars, surely we could just modify these refuel stations to allow for Plug-In vehicles to be recharged there? This is definitely an avenue that is being investigated however one of the selling points of Plug-In vehicles is the opportunity to get away from the undesirable (in some individual’s views) refuelling stations so other possibilities must be considered.
The Technology Strategy Board has allocated a significant amount of funding to its Plugged-In-Places scheme. This scheme aims to roll out electric vehicle charging points in urban areas to facilitate the transition to Plug-In vehicles. Thousands of points have already been installed and many more are earmarked for fitting. This scheme is both important from a financial and also policy angle. With the fragile recovery still not fully embedded in the UK economy, the Government cannot afford to be seen wasting tax payer’s money. The Government has also committed itself to pursuing a low carbon pathway in future economic growth and is keen to realign the economy with green business opportunities. The success of this scheme will be critical to the destiny of Plug-In vehicles in the UK and could herald the expansion from niche market application to mainstream consumer product.
So the importance of making sure the recharge points are situated in optimum locations cannot be understated. In order to achieve this, a number of techniques could prove useful to urban planner. Firstly they can select a number of different locations and then conduct a multi criteria analysis to weigh up the strengths and weaknesses. Secondly they could try to estimate usage levels of different locations and place recharging points in areas of highest predicted demand. Thirdly they could uniformly cover the urban area to give maximum coverage. Whatever appraisal technique they use, and there are a great deal more than what I have listed above, one theme will run through them all and that’s the level of usage. Now it does sound rather obvious but for recharge points to be successful they have to be used and used regularly. Now the biggest question in this theme that comes to my mind is should recharge points be located where Plug-In vehicle drivers are most likely to park or should they be placed in locations that Plug-In vehicle drivers should be encouraged to park. It may prove much cheaper to place a large concentration of recharge points in a small area (such as a multi-storey car park), should Plug-In vehicle drivers be encouraged to park in these locations and how flexible will they be?
Obviously there is no easy answer to this question and a great deal of thought and research will have to be conducted to come up with a good option. Clearly these sorts of decision, at such an early stage in the attempted transition of Plug-In vehicles, will have a huge impact onto their chances of large scale uptake. Urban planners need to share experiences and attempt to come up with a best practice guideline. The Technology Strategy Board should play a role in collecting the data from the trials and making sure all the knowledge and experience is made available for planners making these choices.
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