DFT to invest £37m in EV infastructure

The Department for Transport will invest £37m in electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

It will invest in 12 projects that will aim to address the issue of parking and charging on the street. This includes technology such as wireless charging pads, pop up chargers that emerge from kerb and solar forecourts, which uses the sun's energy to charge a group of EVs.

Sebastian Speight, managing director of Infrastructure at Ingenious, said, 'There is a justifiable concern about the drag on the adoption of electric vehicles in the UK due to the limits on the speed of rolling out the associated charging infrastructure.

'There are currently a number of market participants developing and implementing strategies for rolling out charging infrastructure but there is also a reasonable degree of uncertainty about the future patterns of consumer behaviour which creates a level of risk in these business models which has a closer fit with strategic or venture capital rather than more traditional infrastructure capital. These uncertainties are around the technology type (AC versus DC), charging location and fear of stranded assets and convergence of operating systems. A closer involvement from public stakeholders should enable greater visibility on these risks and increase the availability of private capital.'