More electric vehicle chargers to be installed in Plymouth

Plymouth will be trialling new ways to support residents who cannot charge their electric vehicles at home as they don’t have access to off street parking.

An executive decision has been signed by Plymouth City Council to trial different ways for residents to charge their electric vehicles across the city, to support residents who park on street as they don’t have private driveways or garages to charge their vehicles. Currently around 37 per cent of households in Plymouth do not have off street parking and have to travel to charge their car if they own an EV.

As part of its electric vehicle strategy, the Council is allocating £2.415 million of funding obtained from the government’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund to install:

• 100 pavement channels to enable residents to run a cable from an electricity supply in their house. This is new for Plymouth and would initially be done on a trial basis.
• 600 pedestal and/or flush fitting 7kW chargers (servicing 1,200 charging bays).  These will be publicly available chargers installed on streets and in car parks in areas where residents do not have access to off-street parking.

Many of the existing public EV charge points in Plymouth, are super-fast chargers aimed at those who need to charge their cars quickly. There is however a lack of chargers in residential areas, where residents often wish to charge their cars more cheaply overnight.

More drivers are making the switch to electric vehicles, with electric vehicles accounting for over 16 per cent of the new UK car market in 2023, according to industry statistics. However, electric vehicle uptake in Plymouth has been slower than the UK average, with only 1.5 per cent of 134,000 registered cars and vans as of mid-2024 compared to over 4.6 per cent across the UK. Affordability and insufficient financial incentives, along with perceived range anxiety have been some of the key barriers to EV uptake in Plymouth.

Councillor Mark Coker, Cabinet Member for Transport, said: “Electric vehicles are a key component for how we get out and about in the future and it’s great to see that the city is starting to adapt and put this into practice.”

“We already have over 300 parking bays for electric vehicle charging across the city, but we need to make it easier for residents to charge electric vehicles close to home.”

The Council will review requests from the public for proposals for pavement channels, charge point companies will install charge points across the city. We have divided the city up into 164 areas and all will have charge points.

For more information, please visit: www.plymouth.gov.uk/plymouth-ev-charging-trial