Electric Brighton Newsletter - Autumn 2017

November 21^st 2017

The following is our newsletter which is emailed out to our mailing list every 3 months with local EV news. If you'd like to subscribe, head over to our Get Involved page and fill out the form.

Hello!

Welcome to the first Electric Brighton newsletter. We will be aiming to send you a newsletter with the most relevant local EV news, every 3 months. So without further ado, here’s your first update from Electric Brighton.

Local news

Increase in local ownership

Government data for 2017 highlights a continued growth of electric and plug-in vehicle owners in Brighton and Hove, with a 10% increase in Q1 and 13% increase in Q2. There are now 218 electric and plug-in vehicles registered across the city. We will be keeping our eyes peeled for how well the city is doing in December, when Q3 statistics are released.

Tesla Superchargers coming to Brighton

In September, Tesla quietly added Brighton to their list of 2018 Supercharging locations, after announcing their "Supercharging Cities" initiative which marks a change in strategy for the company’s supercharging network. This news may help Brighton to become a key charging destination for Tesla customers, ahead of their UK launch of the much anticipated Model 3 in 2019. The exact location is yet to be determined, but you can see their planned supercharging locations on their global supercharger map, along with details of their new supercharging strategy on their blog.

Southern Rail to upgrade station chargers

Southern Rail have announced that they will be working with Pod-Point to upgrade the existing chargers at stations across the south, including Brighton and Hove. This will come a relief to anyone familiar with the charging sites, as the existing equipment is somewhat outdated with Hove being offline for some time now and charging units at Brighton station often being unreliable. Importantly, the new 7kWh units will remain completely free with access provided through the Pod-Point app. Electrical infrastructure upgrades at Brighton should also mean that the chargers will no longer stop working between 9pm and 7am, as they currently do.

Early planning underway for new charging infrastructure in Brighton & Hove

Brighton & Hove City Council Leader, Warren Morgan, tweeted about some of the planning currently underway at the council for future charging infrastructure in the city. At a recent meeting of local economic development group, Greater Brighton, he spoke about plans to “significantly expand our EV charging points across the city using private funding”. It’s apparently very early days, but we’re very encouraged to hear of plans in this area.

Regency Square still offline

Bad news as the Charge Your Car chargers at Regency Square car park continue to remain offline. The chargers have been offline since June, and despite some progress, they will remain offline whilst Charge Your Car await replacement parts and/or firmware. The chargers at this popular tourist destination, next to the British Airways i360, have missed the entire summer season.

Electric Brighton news

What have we been up to?

Since Electric Brighton launched in April we have been working to spread news about Electric vehicles in the city and beyond, building our twitter following and have run online advertising to promote charging infrastructure available in the city. In August we hosted our first meetup with owners in the city, a great opportunity to meet local EV drivers and share experiences. We plan to be host another meetup in the coming months.

In October we added a new testimonials section to the website, featuring insights in to EV ownership from local drivers, including Comedian Stephen Grant. If you’d like to share your experiences as an EV owner, let us know!

To keep up to date with EV news and updates, you can follow us on twitter and facebook. If you have any news, suggestions or feedback then feel free to drop us a line on twitter, facebook or email us hello@electricbrighton.com.