Nissan and Ecotricity are campaigning to the UK government to introduce official road signage to highlight the location of the many thousands of standard and rapid EV charging points across the UK.
There are more than 9,000 EV charging points across the nation yet no official signage to help motorists find these often obscurely positioned charge points. The locations of charge points has largely been a lottery in towns and cities where authorities have only given permission to install charge points at often hard to find locations. Likewise, often there are no marked bays to tell non EV motorists not to park there and there are no official signs to help direct an EV owner to find the charge point.
By way of comparison, there are official signs for, ‘migratory toad crossings’, of which there are only 140 nationwide. However, there are some opposed to the idea and introduction of even more signs to clutter our roadways and who also point out that there tend not to be signs directing people to petrol stations.
While the latter argument is generally true, many service stations benefit from simple, ‘petrol’ signs directing passers by to their forecourts and EV charge points are often beside residential streets rather than easy to spot large area forecourts as per petrol and diesel.
Nissan and Ecotricity claim the time is right for the new UK Government to take action and raise awareness of the UK’s EV infrastructure by introducing universal symbols that can be used to designate the different types of EV charging points available on Britain’s roadways, notably standard and rapid chargers.
The campaign is calling on key influencers in the motoring and sustainability sector to share their views on the UK’s electric vehicle charging network in order to encourage the Department for Transport and Office for Low Emission Vehicles to take action. Speaking at the campaign launch, Jim Wright, Managing Director, Nissan Motor (GB) Ltd, explained:
“At Nissan we believe that all electric driving offers a number of benefits to UK motorists and should be made accessible to all. That is why we have partnered with Ecotricity to call on the new Government to give electric vehicles the prominence they now deserve and introduce official signage for charging points across the UK.”
Ecotricity founder Dale Vince said:
“Both the cars and the infrastructure are in place to support the electric car revolution in Britain – there are Electric Highway pumps at almost every motorway services, while companies like Nissan are developing top quality electric cars. It’s time to introduce charging point road signs in Britain – they’ll provide necessary direction for the thousands of electric car drivers in Britain as well as increasing public awareness that the infrastructure is ready for them to make the move to an electric car. Over the past four years, we’ve installed Europe’s most advanced electric car charging network right here in Britain – it has 250 pumps, 20,000 members and over 10 million emission free miles driven since its inception. The growth so far in 2015 has been phenomenal – over a million miles driven on the network every month. The argument for road signs could not be stronger.”
Ecotricity recently revealed that Electric Highway members have now driven over 15 million miles since the charging network’s inception in 2011, with that number now growing by nearly 2 million miles a month and over 1,000 new registrations each month.
Nissan has sold more than 11,500 all electric Nissan LEAFs since the vehicle was launched in the UK, and almost 200,000 worldwide, in 2011 and 2010 respectively.
Source; Nissan & Ecotricity
