The Southampton City Council have recently completed their installation of 30 electric vehicle (EV) charge points in its city centre car parks. This comes as an initiative in achieving Southampton City Council’s ‘Clean Air Strategy’ mission to improve air quality through the availability of clean and sustainable transport.
The Southampton City Council selected their charge stations, placing them on five multi-storey car parks. The parking lots are centrally located with high traffic, daily usage, and long parking wait times, meaning charge points will be used often.
Joju, NewMotion’s installation partners, selected specific locations as they already had an electrical grid on site giving the project around six weeks to complete!
Last year, Southampton was one of 40 UK cities named in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) poll as having damaging air safety levels.
Councillor Christopher Hammond said that the 30 charge points are part of an effort to improve air quality. Southampton’s goal is to be one of only five places in the UK to introduce emission zones on diesel vehicles in 2020. By offering charge points, citizens of Southampton can forget about range anxiety and may even be encouraged to purchase an EV. To motivate others to use EVs, Southampton also plans to reduce parking charges and bridge tolls!
With dynamic load balancing, Southampton’s charge points can smartly allocate power between cars without overloading the electrical grid. Charge points have the ability to communicate with one another during times of high charge demand to minimise electrical overload in the grid, saving unnecessary costs in upgrading grid connections.
The smart cards that come along with the charge points provide all sorts of data and information on charge point usage. Users have access to Europe’s largest charge network and detailed insights on charge costs and other important data.
The charge points selected are made to be smooth and subtle, easily blending into previously petrol dominated parking lots. NewMotion’s charge points are always simple to use and easy to understand.
