Lampposts That Double as EV Charging Points - How Brilliantly Simple Is That?

We're all too aware of the range limitation, acquisition price, and long charging times, but there's another aspect that doesn't get mentioned that often: the absence of residential charging capabilities for those who don't own a garage.

Anyone who lives in the middle of a large city knows that any kind of real estate is used to obtain the maximum value per square footage, which means building apartments will always trump any other type of destination for that lot. And that's talking about the situations where there's actually some room left to build in. In most cases, that's a luxury that simply does not exist.

So, if such an urban dweller wanted to buy an EV at the moment, they'd have to rely on public charging stations, which aren't necessarily near their homes. That makes owning an electric car a lot more stressful than it should be.

Until now, people used to joke about using extension cords that one would hang outside their windows and onto the pavement. Now, German company Ubitricity and the Hounslow Council in London have come up with a much better solution.

In one of those situations that make us slap our faces and wonder how in the world hasn't anyone else thought about it before, these two installed charging points in the new energy-efficient LED street lamps that replaced the old ones.

Any Hounslow resident who is interested in having one of this installed in the lamppost in front of his home only needs to file a request with the Council, and it will put up three. The idea here is that they don’t want to make the adjacent parking bay EV-only, so they install more than is required to see if that meets the needs.

The applicant will then receive a special cable that has a built-in counter and will start getting Ubitricity bills in the mail the following month. The cost per kWh isn’t too high either at £0.13 ($0.17 or €0.15 approximately).

Here is Robert Llewellyn from Fully Charged talking to the people involved about this enterprise, as well as a very happy Tesla Model X owner from Hounslow.