The charger company has pledged to help local authorities update their outdated chargers in a bid to help improve the reliability of existing networks.
The charger company has pledged to help local authorities update their outdated chargers in a bid to help improve the reliability of existing networks.
The charging company, formerly known as BP Chargemaster, has already made an investment of over £400,000 to upgrade more than 50 existing chargers. These chargers were previously installed thanks to government funding approximately 10 years ago and are owned by local authorities.
Given how long ago these chargers were installed BP Pulse has stated that they are now “no longer usable” by EV drivers and that they aim to “radically improve” the charging network in this country that is often criticised.
Following on from this a further £700,000 is due to be allocated to replace and upgrade over 300 units across the country, which will form part of the overall £2m fund that the company has set aside.
BP Pulse has already replaced the majority of the third-party chargers in Milton Keynes with more powerful, UK made 50kW units that also feature contactless payment terminals.
These upgrades will also allow BP Pulse to provide “more effective operational support and ongoing maintenance of the network”, which is definitely something that is likely to be needed as EV technology and the chargers required to support them continues to develop over the coming years.
BP Pulse also intends to work closely with local authorities in order to deliver these upgrades and will initially focus on early chargers that were installed a decade ago and, according to their claims, were installed without “long-term sustainability in mind” and have also suffered from underinvestment.
BP Pulse CEO Matteo de Renzi stated: “While we remain focused on expanding our network, in particular with the proliferation of convenient ultra-fast charging, we know that many of the issues experienced by drivers come from legacy charging infrastructure, so our investment in upgrading it will significantly improve the experience of EV drivers across the country.”
BP Pulse is one of a number of energy firms that are devoted to the improvement of the UK’s EV charger network. The energy giant Shell announced last month that it had plans for a huge expansion of its EV charging network and that their goal is to reach 500,000 chargers worldwide by 2025. They also plan to have a total of 200 rapid and ultra-rapid units on their forecourts in the UK by the end of the year.
BP Pulse was created when oil company BP bought Chargemaster back in 2018 for £130m, which is the largest EV charging network in the UK and it was renamed to BP Pulse back in December.
This scheme to update EV chargers alongside other pledges from the UK government are a good step towards a nationwide charging network that could support the increase we’ve already seen in EVs as well as the increase expected in the coming years. However, it will be interesting to see whether these updates will be able to keep pace, especially if we continue to see the increases in EVs that we’ve seen in recent times. It will also be critical that this infrastructure is future proof as the technology is likely to see dramatic steps forwards.