Electric Brighton Newsletter - Summer 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.

Hello!

Welcome to our Electric Brighton newsletter.
As always, welcome to those of you who are new to our newsletter and thank you for joining our Hug the Plug campaign!

Electric Brighton news

New website

Earlier this year we re-launched our website with lots of new features and information about electric vehicles. Here's a quick rundown of what's new!

• Updated charging map - Our map of chargers in Brighton tools allowing you to filter chargers by bay type, cost, and parking zone. With so many new charge points in the city, it's now much easier to find what you may be looking for.
• New Hug the Plug features - Our map of demand has new tools to highlight the parking zones which have the most chargers per-resident; and where the unmet demand is. Have a play!
• Planned chargers map - Shows all the planned chargers including the locations of the four new rapid charging hubs in the city and the 12 proposed fast charger locations.
• FAQ articles - We've started adding answers to common questions to our searchable FAQ as well as some common topics of discussion such as:
  • Do electric vehicles produce more CO2 than petrol or diesel vehicles? and...
  • How long does an EV battery last?
• 100% Renewable - We've moved our web hosting provider, so our web server is now running on renewable energy direct from Ecotricity!

We've been excited to get these updates out, and hope the site now has even more information to help drivers in Brighton & Hove feel confident in making their next vehicle electric: for a cleaner city and a cleaner future.

Local news

Electric Blue continue work

Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 caused significant disruption to the deployment of lamp-post chargers in the city. Work had to end for the pandemic after around 100 of the first batch of chargers were installed. Work is continuing again now, and Electric Blue are expecting to have the rest of the chargers online by the end of summer.

You can stay up to date with Electric Blue via their website and twitter account, @ElectricBlueLtd.

New fast charger locations revealed

With the lamp post charger installations due to be finished soon, Brighton & Hove Council has revealed 12 new 7kW fast charger locations
in the city. The locations are listed amongst the Council's current TRO proposals. These chargers form the next part of the Council's charger deployment strategy this year, with these 7kW fast chargers accompanying their 4 new Rapid Charger locations and two hundred lamp-post chargers. In addition to the new locations, 7kW chargers at existing locations such as the Level, are also due to be replaced with new charge point hardware.
You can see all the planned locations on our map of planned chargers in Brighton & Hove.

More details of Rapid Chargers

Details of the new Rapid Charger hubs have also been revealed by Brighton & Hove Council, in their current TRO proposals. Three of the four locations have had their plans detailed, which show the parking bays and signage due to be installed. Each of the locations has three rapid charging units with six bays for parking - four for taxis and two for the public. Being paid for in part, by the Office for Low Emission's Vehicles e-taxi grant which was awarded last year, these locations were originally intended for electric taxis only, but now include public access. Whilst installation for these sites is drawing ever closer, the council is continuing to pursue more rapid charging infrastructure in the city over the coming years.

New Pod-Point chargers in Portslade

Two new Pod-Point charging locations have popped up in Portslade. Tesco Metro in Portslade offers free parking for customers and has four 7kW fast chargers available which are free-to-use. Head directly south from there and there is also a new 22kW Pod-Point charger at the Hove Enterprise Centre. Great work Pod-Point!

Pease-Pottage getting Supercharged

Ecotricity provided some of the first rapid chargers in the South of England at the A23 services Pease Pottage, and it's now been revealed that the site is getting a massive overhaul for electric vehicle charging. Six new Ecotricity "Tritium" CCS Chargers will be replacing the existing two Ecotricity chargers, and twelve new "V3" 250kW Tesla Superchargers are also being installed at the site by the year's end. The site provides an important link to the M25, and beyond so this will come as great news to any drivers in Brighton who travel that route regularly.
You can see details of the new facilities on the Mid-Sussex planning portal and corresponding site plan document.

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 our transition away from fossil fuel vehicles, then please consider becoming a Patreon.

Thank you for your support,

Tom, Electric Brighton