Investing in at-home charging infrastructure can help you save over £1000 a year compared to public charging, said Michael Goulden, Co-Founder of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure supplier, Kerbo Charge.
In this week’s episode of the Net-Hero Podcast, Michael told us: ‘Around 40 percent of residents in the UK and 60 percent in London, don’t have driveways.
‘And the problem for those people is that the average price of a slow neighbourhood charger in the UK is 55p a kilowatt hour. That works out to be more expensive per mile than a petrol car.
‘So there is a lack of incentive for people to move to electric – new EVs are more expensive at the moment and the cost of using a public charger is more expensive than running your petrol car.
‘And it is the residents in cities that we want most to move to EVs that are most reluctant. They are the most vulnerable to air pollution.
‘Data tells us that about 300,000 people in the UK died prematurely because of air pollution. And pollution from cars is a big part of that.’
Kerbo Charge provides at-home charging infrastructure without the need for a driveway.
He said: ‘So we know that people want to be able to charge at home and it’s about getting the power safely from their house to their car.
‘The product that we’ve developed is a through pavement EV charging channel.
‘We’ve talked to councils and they told us that it needs to sit flat with the pavement so it doesn’t create a trip hazard. We only want the cable to be going in when the resident is charging and then they need to be able to take it out. It needs to have a lid with a self-closing design so it can’t be left open by accident and it needs to be able to bend with the pavement surface. And we made a product that does just that.’
Michael told us that the infrastructure can also be used for flats.
He said: ‘We’ve developed something for people living in flats especially those on higher floors, which is a sharing app.
‘The way this works is if the ground floor flats can hook up their power to a charger and then run that through the Kerbo Charge channel, then anybody in the block of flats can borrow the power supply.
‘The app records exactly how much electricity is used and then the owner of that flat is paid for the cost of electricity before they pay their bill.’
Although the cost of installing EV charging infrastructure is expensive, Michael tells us that government subsidies and the long-term benefits of having at-home charging can help.
He said: ‘There is now a government grant for everyone in the UK and it is £350 off the price of your charger once you get one of these channels.
‘So that helps bring the bundled price down. So if you get the channel that is about £1000 and a charger would be about £900 fully installed, you take £350 off that.
‘But with chargers you can get a subscription service and that, coupled with the fact that at-home charging is cheaper than public charging, will pay itself back.
‘There are also councils that are helping with the cost of installing Kerbo Charge. So in Nottinghamshire, they are putting our units in for free. In Reading and Milton Keynes, they are expected to subsidise the costs. So there is allocation of cash for local authorities to help EV drivers.’
Watch the full episode below and don’t forget to register to the Big Zero Show Online: 100 days of Labour event.
