As Electric Vehicles sales boom there is going to be no such thing as too many charging points on UK streets.
Currently charging an Electric Vehicle (EV) can take anywhere between 30-60 minutes. The problem is there street charging points are few and far between and installing new ones is a slow and costly process.
Virgin Media think the solution might be adding EV charging stations to its green broadband cabinets.
The idea is not new. In Germany Deutsche Telekom has added EV charging points to over 12,000 cabinets. However, Virgin Media has nearly four times as many cabinets dotted all over the UK.
While not all of its 40,000 street cabinets will be suitable for charging the scheme could revolutionise the roll-out of electric vehicles across the UK as consumers become more confident they will be able to recharge if they run low of power.
While Virgin does not cover the whole of the UK with its fibre network, it still has the potential to expand the UK’s EV charge network. Currently, the UK has only 11,000 publically accessible charge points. If Virgin was able to convert a quarter of its 40,000 cabinets it could double the UK current capacity to charge electric vehicles.
Virgin will begin testing the idea at six sites in the coming weeks. It aims to have all six tests up and running by Easter with the first will coming online this week at Southwark.
