The EV Experience Centre Aims To Educate Consumers About Plug-In Vehicles

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What’s the worst part about buying a car? By and large, it’s the sales experience, and the unpleasantness associated with buying a car is only compounded when the salespeople assigned to make the experience pleasant don’t know heads from tails when it comes to plug-in vehicles, as is often the case.

EV YouTube show Fully Charged discovered a new approach to solving this chronic problem in Milton Keynes in the UK — it’s called the EV Experience Centre. The EV Experience Centre is essentially just a storefront in a typical shopping mall that is stocked with plug-in vehicles from 6 different manufacturers, all sorts of charging equipment, and, most importantly, 10 EV Gurus that have been specially trained on all of the vehicles and chargers in the store.

The EV Experience Centre is the realization that plug-in vehicles represent a paradigm shift in automobile transportation that can be scary to many customers. Putting a friendly, non-salesy store in a mall that’s stocked with all the new cars buyers are already curious about and a team of informed experts can help those who might be interested in a plug-in vehicle to get more comfortable with the idea of owning a plug-in.

Beyond just talking about the cars, the EV Experience Centre can take customers out on short test drives or even setup one week loaners for a very reasonable fee of 75 quid, which is around $100 USD. Customers that are still interested can be directed to a specific dealership as a “pre-warmed lead” that is much more likely to result in a sale than a normal customer on the lot.

The EV Experience Centre is a joint venture between plug-in vehicle charging solution provider Chargemaster and the Milton Keynes council as a means of advocating plug-in vehicles in a brand-agnostic way.

Tom Callow, Director of Communication for Chargemaster, spoke with the Fully Charged team about the current state of public charging in the UK and shared some very interesting stats. Looking at the ration of plugging in at a charging station, they found a usage ration of 10-to-1 between home charging and public charging, but a power draw ratio of 3-to-1. It makes sense when you think about it. Most of the time when people plug in at home, they are just topping up from a visit to the store or the daily round trip to work. Conversely, when people charge up out on the town, they are looking to fill up faster and, as such, draw more power per session.

Looking at rapid charging, Tom shared that rapid charging in the UK is currently 15% of the public charging network and that he foresees that number staying the same for quite some time. Chargemaster surely understands charging behavior in its neck of the woods but that feels low, if I were to put my money on a number.

In the last 12 months, EVs have increased in volume significantly and that’s showing up in public charging utilization. “If you rewind even a year ago, the actual use of our public network has doubled, so the number of charging sessions in a month has doubled since last August,” Tom shared.

In 2012, there were around 3,000 chargepoints in the UK, which has more than quadrupled to 14,000 public chargepoints today. Looking to the future, Tom expects the number of public charging stations could be as high as 100,000 chargepoints around the UK to service the expected 1,000,000 plug-in vehicles on the road by then.

What’s especially neat about Chargemaster is that all of the power used to charge cars on it’s public network is 100% renewable. That sets a great precedent and draws a very firm line in the sand as to where the company stands from an emission and renewable energy standpoint. Good for them! The future, it seems, is already in the UK … in at least a few ways.

To learn more about any of the above, head over to the EV Experience Centre website, hit them up on Twitter , jump into some Fully Charged action over on YouTube, send them your ideas for a show on Twitter @FullyChargedShw and dig in to see all of the innovative ways Chargemaster is disrupting plug-in vehicle charging at the official Chargemaster website.


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Kyle Field

I'm a tech geek passionately in search of actionable ways to reduce the negative impact my life has on the planet, save money and reduce stress. Live intentionally, make conscious decisions, love more, act responsibly, play. The more you know, the less you need. As an activist investor, Kyle owns long term holdings in Tesla, Lightning eMotors, Arcimoto, and SolarEdge.

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