Electric Brighton Newsletter - Spring 2021

May 24^th 2021

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.

Greetings!

What a start to the year it has been! All sorts of new electric vehicles can be spotted around Brighton & Hove as more people switch to electric vehicles in the city. Here is our latest roundup of local EV news. Oh yes, and of course - A warm welcome to all those of you who are new to our newsletter and thank you for joining our Hug the Plug campaign, which now has over 450 members on our map of EV demand around the city.

Local news

New Rapid Chargers are LIVE and on FREE VEND 🎉

Three new Rapid Charging locations are now live! The new locations can be found at Victoria Road in Portslade, Preston Park and Ashton Rise on the edge of Hanover. Each location offers a 50kW DC CCS or CHAdeMO connection with a second 22kW AC Connection that can be used at the same time as the DC outlets. Operated by EB Charging, they have now been switched on and will be on free vend until further notice. They are visible on Zap-Map and will later appear in the EB Charging app. When a paid service starts, they will cost a fixed rate of 27p/kWh.

To use the chargers on free vend, simply:

Tap any RFID card on the card reader (any card will do)
Follow the on-screen instructions to start your charge

These Rapid Chargers can give a substantial boost to any EV's range in just 30 minutes, meaning the city now has a full offering of charging speeds from "I have all the time in the world" overnight charging to "I really need a charge right now because I forgot to plug-in last night and now I need to get to work" (ahem, speaking from experience).

In addition to the public charge points, each location also includes two Rapid Chargers exclusively for the use of electric taxis. This is something that is sure to help boost the city's transition to cleaner transport and hopefully see a reduction in those polluting diesel and petrol taxis. Taxi drivers who make the switch to an electric vehicle, can not only help to make our city's air cleaner but also stand to save a fortune in fuel bills every year. The next time you're in a taxi, try asking the driver if they're considering an EV.

The fourth location will be online later this year at Brighton Racecourse, where work has now started.

The Inaugural London to Brighton Electric Vehicle Rally!

The first-ever London to Brighton Electric Vehicle rally is just a few months away now and is shaping up to be a great day for EV and clean energy enthusiasts.

Participants completing the 58-mile journey from the banks of the River Thames will finish at Brighton Beach on Madeira Drive, where an E-Village will be packed full of showcases, entertainment, food & drink - along with an area for people to test drive electric vehicles. For anyone thinking about making the switch to an EV, it'll be a great opportunity to learn more and discover the great benefits they can offer.

The 27 entrants so far include a Renault Twizy microcar, a Sinclair C5, solar-powered vehicles and a self-build vehicle, built from a chicken coup!
The event organisers have recently announced that the event will be proudly sponsored by EDF Energy, Britain’s biggest generator of zero-carbon electricity and a leading EV provider.

We're proud to be supporting this incredible event. Be sure to mark the diary Sunday 18th July and come on down to Madiera Drive to meet all the contestants and see the very latest in electric vehicles.

And it's not too late to enter the rally!

More dedicated bays

In our survey last year of EV drivers in the city, we found that access to the city's 200 lamp post chargers was easily the single biggest reported issue, with 68% of users who'd tried to use one saying that the problem was non-EVs parked in the bay. So we're really pleased to see that as part of ongoing efforts by the Council to improve this situation, 12 lamp post charger locations are being converted to include dedicated bays.

The new dedicated bays will be added at: Tivoli Crescent (Zone A), St Lukes Terrace (Zone C), Matlock Road (Zone E), Arundel Street (Zone H), Waterloo Street (Zone M), Fourth Avenue (Zone N), Third Avenue (Zone N), Wilbury Road (Zone N), Lorna Road (Zone O), Lancaster Road (Zone Q), Hove Park Villas (Zone T), and Richardson Road (Zone W).

What's more, plans are already afoot for the next round of bays to be converted. The council is assessing changing demand and selecting locations for bays every 3 months, so there will be plenty more to come. The council expects around 50% of lamp post charging sites to have been converted by the start of next year.

If you're having difficulty accessing your local charger and think that you and others in your area would benefit from a marked bay being added, then we suggest contacting the council's EV team at electric.vehicles@brighton-hove.gov.uk to let them know your experience.

Solar-powered chargers now live for the University of Brighton

6 new charge points from Brighton Energy Co-op have now been installed at Varley Park and Falmer Campus. Available on the Pod-Point network, these charge points offer students at the University of Brighton locally sourced, renewable and freshly harvested solar energy, all at a competitive rate of 26p/kWh.

Find out more about their work and stay up to date via their dedicated EV page.

Local EV ownership update

The latest Government data for Q4 2020 shows that plug-in vehicle ownership in Brighton & Hove had another increase of more than 11% from Q3 to 871 plug-in vehicles. This is in line with the annual increase in plug-in vehicle ownership from 2019 of 11%.

We can also see that ownership of pure battery-electric vehicles rose 15% in Q4, bringing the total number to 529.

To better track these numbers over time, we've published these numbers on a new page about EV ownership figures for Brighton & Hove. We've also been able to publish data that the Council has shared with us about how much energy Brighton's chargepoints are delivering, and the amount of CO₂ emissions that they are saving.

The end of ICE'ing?

EB Charging (formerly Electric Blue) have revealed some details about their new iBay® system, which will be launching at Brighton's new Rapid Charging locations this summer.

The iBay system will monitor vehicles that are parked in the bays and know whether or not they are plugged in and charging. This will enable better parking enforcement, helping to ensure the charging points are available as much as possible. The system will also allow EV owners to book a charging session in advance, helping to further maximise use of the charging locations. EB Charging will issue details of how the booking system will operate shortly.

More iBay locations will be rolled out in the future, including at some fast and lamp post charging locations.

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.
If you would like to support Electric Brighton and our efforts to speed up the transition away from fossil fuel vehicles in Brighton & Hove, then please check out some of the ways you can support us.