Tuesday 30 September 2014

UK: one third of Source London chargepoints not working

Just-Auto.com: The Source London electric vehicle public charging network reportedly has flagged nearly a third of its charging point locations as temporarily unavailable.

According to zap-map.com, which tracks charging point locations and availability, the network has made important progress since French company, IER, took over responsibility from Transport for London (TfL) earlier this month.

After testing all of Source London’s 464 charging stations, IER discovered 168 were faulty and required maintenance work, the report said.

"Unfortunately, for EV drivers and Source London members, this means that currently the amount of publicly accessible points in London has diminished significantly," zap-map.com said. It added this presumably was the case before the IER take over, just not public knowledge.

IER said it was working with six charge point manufacturers to fix the stations and reopen them to the public as soon as possible.

"Despite the short-term inconvenience, this should be viewed as a big step forward for Source London," zap-map.com said.

"IER is building a platform for future expansion, once existing points are back online and operating as they should, the French company has indicated [it has] major investment plans focused on expanding the charging network.

"At the moment, Source London mainly consists of slow and fast charging points. With the developments in rapid charging over the last year and major backing from government funding, it is safe to assume that a sizeable chunk of IER’s investment will be centred on rapid charging facilities."

Non-members can currently sign up to the Source London network for GBP5 which will give them access to the network’s charging points till the end of 2014. Existing members have automatically had their memberships extended to the end of the year. A new membership scheme will begin at the start of 2015.

The UK-wide charging map, Zap-Map Live, details Source London points down for maintenance or still available for public use.