Electric Highway to expand in UK

Ecotricity will start charging electric car drivers for using its British Electric Highway – Europe’s most comprehensive car charging network.

The Electric Highway was opened five years ago, in July 2011, and counts almost 300 ‘Ecotricity Pumps’ – 276 of which are rapid chargers – across Britain for electric car users to travel throughout the country thanks to renewable energy only for free.

The charging infrastructure currently powers two million miles a month and has powered more than 30 million miles –the equivalent of £2.5 million pounds worth of free travel – since 2011.

The highway had a significant success last year and Ecotricity now has to start charging for the service to be able to maintain and grow the network.

The network will stay free for Ecotricity domestic energy customers, but a twenty minutes charge will cost £5 for other users – still a lot less than the equivalent cost of petrol or diesel.

In order to make payments, the users of the Electric Highway – nearly 40,000 people – will have to download a mobile phone app which will be available for Android or Apple users, where it will be possible to see the location and availability of the nearest charging stations.

The change to a charging service will be implemented gradually to the network from 11 July to 5 August.

Ecotricity aims at changing people’s mentality towards electric vehicles in order for every new car to be at least part electric by 2030 and all the cars on the road to be electric by 2040.