The Department for Transport has announced its new strategy to support the transition to electric vehicles, including £450 million to help local authorities to find innovative ways to increase local charge point coverage for their staff, residents, fleets and visitors.
Diode’s Charge Platform is uniquely positioned to give local authorities the ability to engage with individual drivers and help businesses understand how many charge points they’ll need over the next 5 years.
The platform’s clever driver survey collects journey data, creates an energy profile for each vehicle, then converts this into the number of charge points required at each location. This analysis includes a recommended charge point power to ensure adequate charging speeds – and can also avoid the unnecessary installation of costly rapid chargers and network upgrades.
For drivers, Diode’s instant EV Readiness Report is underpinned by their actual vehicle usage and is packed with everything they need to know about EVs: their access to charging, costs and CO2 savings compared to their current vehicle, plus an interactive tool to assess how different EVs would fit into their lifestyle based on their specific driving behaviour.
According to DfT, the UK needs more local engagement and planning, meaning that the role of local authorities is even more important for a faster, easier transition to EV.
Dan Eyre, Co-founder and COO at Diode said: “Removing the barriers to EV adoption by ensuring charging is effortless for drivers is a complex challenge. For those who don’t have access to a home charger, many will rely on workplace charging, which is why we passionately believe supporting businesses should be a high priority for local authorities.
Some local authorities are leading the way and others are struggling through a lack of resources and expertise. This is where we can help. Our platform allows users to self-serve and automatically generates the outputs, saving time and making EV expertise accessible to everyone.”
With the majority of new EVs going to fleets and company car drivers, supporting businesses and their employees with their switch is something local authorities can do to really help accelerate the transition. And of course, this has a positive knock-on effect – the more new EVs on our roads, the better the second-hand market will be. For everyone to make the switch, there will need to be a decent stock of EVs in the used-car market as well, and these drivers need access to charging just as much as new car buyers.
For more information, feel free to email Dan Eyre at [email protected] or call 07825550520
