There is absolutely no doubt that Britain is heading in the direction of electric vehicles as the government is very keen to see to it that we reduce our carbon footprint. Indeed, there are government grants for a range of electric vehicles and also grants for electric car charging points installation either at home or in the workplace.
However, there are certain problems associated with charging an electric vehicle. If you live in a home with a driveway there is no problem because you can have a charging point installed on the wall or in your garage. Just plug it in and leave it overnight. However, what happens if you live in a flat or a terraced home? You can hardly trail an electric charging cable across the pavement.
Help is at hand. Southwark council in London last November had 50 charging points installed on lamp posts, while in February Richmond-upon-Thames began the installation of 210 lamp post charging points. It appears that you can get about 20 miles of driving with one hour of charging at a lamp post, so theoretically one lamp post could charge a lot of cars each week, especially in cities where people don’t tend to drive very far.
Another idea is induction mats which work in the same way as WiFi charging pads for your phone. You would have an induction mat in the road outside your home and park over it. This would then charge up the car which also has an induction pad fitted underneath it.
