The Electric Vehicle Revolution

Posted by emapsite on 26th November 2020 -

The electric vehicle revolution – we’re ready with the data. 

It’s true, the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) will need a seismic and collective effort. But we knew that already. A key point of the Government’s plan, announced yesterday, will be the £1.3bn investment in EV charging points. 

The good news is, we’re in a great place to underpin the physical changes with all the data and analysis needed to build the best possible infrastructure for a nation that will be moving to all-new electric vehicles. 

We’ll need to understand where to charge them of course; how to charge them and which kind of chargers should be made available, where. 

Did you know, you could go to three different public EV charging points at the moment and get three different levels of charge in the same time? One plug could give you three miles an hour; another could give you 13 miles an hour; and a third could give you 180 miles in 30 minutes. (Incidentally, at the moment, there is no consistent map or app that shows all of the UK’s charging points – something that will have to be addressed in the long term.)

Then there’s the proximity factor: how, for example, will people living on the ninth floor of an apartment block manage if they buy a new electric vehicle? Not every building comes with parking, not every car park or roadside space has a charging point yet. Average UK driving distances will be an influence, too – who drives where, how often, and how fast they travel – as will the need for widely spread, efficiently operated Lithium Ion battery replacement or disposal points. Even though EVs are seen as the future, they do have drawbacks. 

That data – where do we put these charges, where will this change in thinking impact the mobile economy, where do we need to make changes now in the way we’re working on the highways? – is precisely the information needed to plan an efficient car-charging network. And it’s exactly the kind of data models and insights our Spatialise team creates to support the heavy lifting analysis by contractors, electricity providers, estate managers, Highways Networks, retailers … all of the key stakeholders that are designing and building this infrastructure as we speak.