Birmingham City Council has announced a new project to expand the city’s electric vehicle (EV) charging network in partnership with ubitricity.
The deal will see the charge point operator work with the council to carry out a pilot deployment of 560 lamppost EV charge points across residential areas of the city, where access to private off-street parking is limited or unavailable.
It is being delivered in response to data showing that most EVs are kept at homes without access to a private driveway. Part of Birmingham’s wider Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy, it is aimed at improving access to EV charging infrastructure more broadly.
ubitricity will supply, install, own, operate, and maintain the new charge points on behalf of Birmingham City Council, with the charge points installed in lampposts on 82 streets across the city. Each point takes less than an hour to install and is designed to minimise disruption and the council’s key requirement to avoid street clutter.
Deployed using Office of Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS) funding, the first 300 of these charge points have already been installed, and the remaining 260 will be installed before the end of Spring 2025.
Councillor Majid Mahmood, Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport at Birmingham City Council, said:
“While our focus as a council is on delivering the Birmingham Transport Plan and encouraging people to swap private vehicles for public transport, we also want to ensure that, for those who require use of a car, we have the infrastructure in place to facilitate use of low or zero-emission vehicles.”
Stuart Wilson, UK Managing Director of ubitricity, said:
“ubitricity is delighted to be supporting Birmingham City Council as they begin this journey to create one of the largest public EV charging networks outside London, encouraging the transition to electric vehicles, and helping to create a cleaner and healthier, environment for the people of Birmingham.”
Image courtesy of Birmingham City Council/ubitricity
