Siemens & Ubitricity electrify entire road in London
Siemens unveils the first street in the UK that has been completely converted for charging electric vehicles. The Sutherland Avenue in London is over half a mile long and was renamed Electric Avenue, W9.
The project, carried out jointly with Ubitricity and Westminster City Council, converted 24 street lamps into charging stations for electric vehicles using the existing urban infrastructure. Two adjacent roads are due to be added in the coming weeks.
Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Siemens Smart Infrastructure, considers the ‘Electric Avenue W9’ an “important showcase of what’s possible using existing city infrastructure”. She also pointed to further research by Siemens stating that 36 per cent of British motorists planned to buy a hybrid or electric vehicle as their next car, with two in five people saying that a lack of charging points stopped them from doing so sooner.
Indeed, on-street parking and charging is a crucial issue in the UK and London in particular. However, Westminster City Council that rules much of central West London claims it has more EV points than any UK local authority. Of a total of 296 lamp column charge points, 24 are located on ‘Electric Avenue, W9’. Westminster City Council wants to reach a thousand charge points within the next year, as it has twice the number of locally registered EVs than any other inner London borough and the most among all the other London districts, according to the press release.
Also Siemens and Ubitricity are no strangers to the city. The chargers are part of their joint assignment as part of the Go Ultra Low City Scheme (GULCS) funded by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles. The project is aiming to deliver 1,150 charge points for electric vehicles across London boroughs by the end of 2020.
With this latest move, Siemens and Ubitricity claim they have now completed over 1,300 installations covering the breadth of the city. Other installations happened in Portsmouth and Liverpool and amount to 9.9 MW, according to the companies.
The technology used in the conversions on the Electric Avenue allows EVs to be charged overnight to a range of approximately 124 – 186 miles, says Siemens, depending on the battery charging system used in the plug-in car.
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