(REPOST:Clean Energy)
Graeme Cooper was speaking at a 3D Energy event in central London last week where he revealed that the transmission system operator had mapped England and Wales’ highways and motorways, traffic density and population to find the optimum locations for a potential network of 350kW chargers.
“We crunched a lot of data and concluded for at least England and Wales we can fix range anxiety with 50 strategic locations for these ultra-rapid chargers. To an extent [this] means that 96% of UK drivers would be able to drive in any direction from any location in the UK and be within 50 miles from an ultra-rapid super charger,” he said, adding that a similar plan was to be submitted to the Scottish government.
Range anxiety has long been considered one of the major obstacles to increased take-up of EVs, with a third of drivers recently found to believe an electric vehicle won’t be able to handle the amount of miles they travel in their current vehicles.
Despite home charging offering a new shift in ‘refuelling’ by bypassing the need to travel to a petrol station, many still consider there to be a need for forecourt style charging for EVs.