Electric Brighton Newsletter - Spring 2020

The following is our newsletter which is emailed out to our mailing list every few months with local EV news. If you'd like to subscribe, head over to our Hug the Plug campaign and fill out the form.

Welcome to our Electric Brighton newsletter.

Once again, welcome to those of you who are new to our newsletter and thank you for joining our Hug the Plug campaign! We have now reached over 300 members, all plotted on our map of EV demand around the city.

Local news

New service provider for the city

Last year the council agreed on a new service provider for the city, Electric Blue. They’ll be the company working with the council to install new chargers and maintain existing ones throughout the city, for the years to come. The council’s contract with Electric Blue promises to provide improved uptime of chargers, ensuring repairs are carried out more promptly - addressing one of the biggest gripes for existing users, highlighted in our recent owners feedback survey.

Electric Blue will also be taking over operation of all the city’s existing on-street charging locations (currently operated by Charge-your-Car). Costs have been agreed at 26p/kWh across all chargers in the city.

Lamp post chargers being installed NOW

You may have seen some of the new chargers popping up around town recently. Around 60 new chargers have been installed so far, with Electric Blue continuing their installations throughout March. Chargers are free to use until the end of the month.

To see the latest chargers that have been installed and their availability, download the Electric Blue App on either the App Store or Google Play. We’ll be updating our website map too, adding the new locations as they go live.

All 200+ lamp post chargers are due to be installed by April. In response to feedback from local EV owners, the council has earmarked 33 of the lamp post chargers to have reserved parking for electric vehicles, you can view these reserved bays on the council’s website. There is potential for more reserved bays in the future, as demand increases.

Local EV enthusiast and Twitter user @YoungEVDriver has made a video showing how to use the new Lamp Post chargers. Check out the video on the link below.

Rapid Chargers coming this year

In preparation for new electric taxi Rapid charging facilities (part of a £468,000 government grant awarded last year), Brighton & Hove Council sought feedback from local taxi drivers on where they would like to see rapid chargers installed. The results of the survey were published last year, along with the 4 original proposed rapid charger locations: Brighton Racecourse, Portslade Town Hall, Morley Street and Preston Park. Each location will include at least 3 rapid charge points, available for both taxis and some capacity for the general public (details to be confirmed).

Brighton & Hove Council are steaming ahead with progress in this area, meaning the city will be getting new Rapid Chargers this year - more news soon!

New chargers on the horizon from Brighton Energy Cooperative

Local energy cooperative, BHesCO are working hard to provide yet more EV charging at locations in the city using energy from solar arrays. 100% local, renewable energy for cars!

For more updates and information about their Solar EV chargers, you can subscribe to their newsletter.

Sussex EVs April Meetup

Friendly community group, Sussex EVs will be hosting another Brighton EV owners meetup on Sunday 5th April at Withdean Stadium, 1pm - 4pm.

These regular events are a good way to see a broad range of electric vehicles and meet drivers in Brighton and across Sussex. If you're a local driver or curious about getting an electric vehicle, it's a great chance to find out more about the practicalities of owning an EV from passionate advocates.

To stay up to date and find out about future EV meetups, you can join their community group on Facebook.

Local EV ownership update

Latest Government data shows that Brighton & Hove plug-in vehicle ownership continues to rise, with Q3 data showing 513 vehicles registered in the city.

Ownership has over doubled since Electric Brighton began in 2017.

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

Thank you for your continued support,

Tom, Electric Brighton 🚙 ⚡️