New drive for electric cars in Brighton and Hove

10:00pm Sunday 20th September 2009 in News By Louise Acford

ELECTRIC cars will be refuelled in the streets of Brighton and Hove using the first charging points outside London.

Plans to introduce the charging points are expected to be given the go-ahead next week - despite there currently being only three electric cars in the city.

Points will be sited in Bartholomews in the city centre and Ditchling Road, near The Level.

They could be in use within a few weeks.

Calvey Taylor-Haw, managing director of Brighton-based Elektromotive Ltd, has won the contract to provide the chargers to the city.

He said that the number of electric cars in the area would increase as all the major car manufacturers introduce new models to the market next year.

Mr Taylor-Haw added: “If the public start to believe the infrastructure is coming through, they will have more confidence to buy electric cars.

“In 12 months you will be seeing plenty of them on the city streets.”

Locations for three further sites are still under consideration but they are expected to come into use by the end of this year.

Mr Taylor-Hall said the cars take six hours to fully charge from empty and a 10,000 mile trip would cost under £200.

The same distance in a petrol powered car would cost £1,200.

An electric car can travel about 100 miles on a full battery. The charging point scheme, which will be funded by a £130,000 European Union grant, and is part of the council’s sustainable transport policy.

The city’s few electric car owners already receive 50% discounts on parking permits in the city.

Brighton and Hove City Councillor Geoffrey Theobald, cabinet member for the environment, said: “The city has a reputation for being innovative. Becoming the first area outside London to provide on-street public charging points will benefit residents, visitors and businesses.

“Electric vehicles themselves produce zero emissions and so are much better for the air quality in town and city centres than petrol and diesel powered vehicles. As well as the environmental benefits, fluctuations in oil prices have also increased interest in electric cars."

Comments(21)

bibble says...
10:14pm Sun 20 Sep 09

That's a nice little earner. £130,000 for 3 battery chargers, or £43,000 each. For three cars at present.

Oh, and us tax payers are paying for it. You see, we are a net contributor to the EU. So we give them our money, then they give it out to their pet projects.

Electric cars in London are still a novelty, despite the charging points. I see them in Mayfair, sometimes parked two to a bay.

Easy way to make money: jump on a bandwagon which the EU wants, grab a chunk of taxpayers' money.

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bibble says...
10:15pm Sun 20 Sep 09

Sorry, that came out a little bit wrong. £43,000 for each car is what I meant to write.

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stickman says...
10:25pm Sun 20 Sep 09

£130000 for three sockets? Must be the same electrician who did my loft conversion.

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Dave At Home says...
10:53pm Sun 20 Sep 09

Two words spring to mind - G-Whizz


No news on how much the council will charge for recharging your battery, whereas in London it is free.... another half report by the Argus. How annoying it is not to read a complete story with ALL the facts.

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Voice of the silent Majority says...
11:23pm Sun 20 Sep 09

10000 miles for £200 pounds plus £1500 for the coffee you drink waiting for the SIX THOUSAND HOURS your journey would take in charging time.

So now with Car Club spaces, Big Bin spaces and probally Electric spaces why not put the cost of the Car Park spaces up to pay for the fact we will have no where left to park

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baldseagull says...
12:15am Mon 21 Sep 09

Electric cars that charge in this way will be as common as Betamax video recorders in 5 years time, Hydrogen will be the way.

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Tye says...
7:22am Mon 21 Sep 09

Green hogwah
Indeed these cars are dangerous in crashes even at VERY slow speed, the chemicals in the batteries are dangerous - the extraction is done via strip mining destroying vast tracts of beautiful land and the ONLY way they are allowed on the roads is because of certain exeemptions so that they are even NOT classed as cars (I'll be glad to be corrected here but you can drive dangerously, kill people on pavements and cannot be charged with anything as was the case in the B/Mouth story last week)

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The ghost of Osama bin there says...
8:45am Mon 21 Sep 09

The problem is that cars solely powered by electricity are not the way forward, and never will be. The lack of range, long charging time and high battery replacement costs (every 2 or 3 years) will make sure of that.
Hybrid cars have already shown they work, and in the future it will be cars powered by either hydrogen or water. But that's a long way off still.
As bibble so rightly points out, it's EU money, and as we are net contributors it's our taxes that are funding this!
There's no info in this article as to what the car owners wil be charged to use the power points.
I really don't think cars powered solely by electricity will ever be around in significant numbers.

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snerper says...
8:55am Mon 21 Sep 09

Go ahead and scoff if you like, this is the future of our transport! I am proud to say that twenty years ago I
sold my Sinclair C5 and bought one of the first electric cars for the princely sum of £100! It was a snip at that price, but of course, the £250.000 I spent on the extension lead did take the edge off the excitement just a little bit!

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She-Ra, Princess Of Power says...
12:29pm Mon 21 Sep 09

I'm all for renewable energy sources when it comes to transport but this seems a little.... impratical....

100 miles to 6 hours charging? So if you're doing a 200 mile trip you have to stop halfway and wait for 6 hours before you can continue?!

Around town is the only place I would see the benefit, but if we're being encouraged to get out of our cars and to walk or bus to reduce traffic then is there much point?!

Not to mention as Tye pointed out, the manufacturing of the batteries! It's probably more eco-friendly to stick to a petrol or diesel car...

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Darling2 says...
12:43pm Mon 21 Sep 09

No doubt Theobold will be getting rid of his Jag and leading the way.

Thought not......

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Wilftop says...
1:33pm Mon 21 Sep 09

instead of all these stupid haior-brained schemes why don't the council sort out the real proplems first. Volume of traffic, areas with no permit parking taking the strain for lots of commuter cars, anti social behaviour.


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Granny says...
1:48pm Mon 21 Sep 09

As I commented last time this subject was in the argus, is it worth all the expense or do the council expect all motorists to rush out to buy electric cars? The way our local tax keeps increasing, to include hairbrain schemes like this, no-one will be able to afford to run cars soon anyway.

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yorkie44 says...
4:00pm Mon 21 Sep 09

Electric cars will reduce polution in Brighton but they will mean polution somewhere else when the electricity is generated. As for isolating from oil price fluctuations, all I can say is that my household electricity is not isolated from fluctuations. Coun Theobald is wrong yet again. As for the argument that the electricty will come from renewables in future this is just rubbish. The grid system cannot be operated with more than 20% of renewable energy - a well proven fact here and in Germany. This is just a case of tax payers money going to businesses again with no benefit.

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justme says...
4:35pm Mon 21 Sep 09

ok so i was doing a project on this at my old job and electric cars are a really positive move in the right direction - however there are a lot of downsides to them as well. for instance, if u drive ur car from brighton to bristol for instance, u need to make sure there is a charging point at the destination point otherwise u will not make it back to brighton due to the battery life. they are also very expensive to purchase, plus the charging point...it all adds up to thousands of pounds. only people with that sort of money just lying around can afford to do it unless u save up for a long time. however, they are a positive thing to help bring carbon emissions down. they will be a big thing eventually, but there are more negative things to positive things at the moment.

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Tye says...
8:55pm Mon 21 Sep 09

Do the council EVER think that if they stop wasting money OR stop paying people who leave a fortune so s NOT to complain about them they MIGHT, justMIGHT ask for less tax - year on year -
NO, I thought not!

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boblat says...
11:29am Tue 22 Sep 09

Having to contend with all the opposition posed by the petty minded, who dissagree in their own small way, with all new proposals, especially to clean the dirty air in Brighton and to carry on driving their fat 4+4s, is becoming a BORE!
Any attempt to bury the bad policies of our peers, reformation from the young and concern over the fast advancing catastrophies due to past greed is, in my mind, A WINNER!

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bibble says...
2:09pm Tue 22 Sep 09

Nice idea, boblat. But how many electric cars do you think you will see in Brighton one year from now? If it's 200 it won't make the slightest bit of difference to the pollution (which I agree in some part of Brighton is very bad).

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ghost bus driver says...
5:22pm Tue 22 Sep 09

snerper wrote:
Go ahead and scoff if you like, this is the future of our transport! I am proud to say that twenty years ago I
sold my Sinclair C5 and bought one of the first electric cars for the princely sum of £100! It was a snip at that price, but of course, the £250.000 I spent on the extension lead did take the edge off the excitement just a little bit!
There is (or at least, there was) an old electric car on display in the EDF hall at Amberley chalk pits museum. Presumably so we can all have a laugh

I'm fairly sure there`s a Sinclair C5 in there too...

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Tye says...
8:18am Wed 23 Sep 09

bibble wrote:
Nice idea, boblat. But how many electric cars do you think you will see in Brighton one year from now? If it's 200 it won't make the slightest bit of difference to the pollution (which I agree in some part of Brighton is very bad).
And the its the Polices' fault because?

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NIck99 says...
1:38pm Wed 23 Sep 09

You wouldnt get me in one of those electric cars, I'd be worried about getting shocks and stuff.
Scarey.

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