Electric vehicles are the most reasonable cars to drive around town and its outskirts for now. They’re simple, easy to use, cheap to maintain and nothing comes out of their rear ends. The only problem shows up when you have to recharge them and we’re not necessarily referring to waiting times but to the lack of recharging spots.
Most countries have already started to build such an infrastructure inside their most important cities. It’s a relatively slow process and it comes at a rather bothering cost, but it looks like some Germans found the cheapest solution yet.
Berlin based start-up company ubitricity says the infrastructure is already there, the only thing needing to be done is to adapt it to allow electric vehicles recharging.
Their solution?
Fit most of the city’s light poles with electric sockets and offer EV owners a smart cable. This way, the EV infrastructure costs will be dramatically cut down, as the government and/or private companies will only need to install some sockets and maybe some transformers here and there.
The electricity consumed by a plugged EV won’t have to be measured and billed by an extra expensive fixed installed meter this way, but by the customer’s portable ubitricity metering device placed on the charging cord.
Poles with benefits
Yeah, the system will require you, as an user, to pay more at first in order to get the charge-o-meter but in the end, every pole you see will be a potential charging spot. Just make sure you are allowed to park next to it.
Moreover, by giving the customer the functional part of the recharging station, infrastructure is protected from thieves and damage, meaning almost zero maintenance cost and cheap billing. The only thing that will ramp the price up will be the grid load.
About 200,000 poles in Germany could be immediately retrofitted with charging spots as their grid connection and position allow for EV charging at any time. Currently, ubitricity has partnered with Berlin’s energy provider Grundgrun to fit 100 city light poles with the sockets and start testing out the system.
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