I have long appreciated the ease of charging courtesy Electric Highway (Ecotricity) as I travel longer journeys on Motorways.
Now, it seems, their logo will, from this month, appear on motorway signs for the first time – showing electric car drivers at which services they can charge up.
Electric Highway is the most comprehensive car charging network in Europe, and their 260 ‘Ecotricity Pumps’ cover almost all motorway services in the UK.
Clearly the era of free charging is coming to an end; that’s no surprise and I am happy to have benefitted so far.
Charging will, I hope, mean that the structure will continue to strengthen with a growing number of very reliable chargers to meet demand and reduce the likelihood of long queueing as demand grows – no more of a wait than I would expect at fossil fuel pumps.
Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity and the Electric Highway, says:
We launched the Electric Highway in 2011.
There are now over 50,000 electric cars in Britain; that’s more than a tenfold increase in two years, and this exponential growth is reflected in the use of the Electric Highway, which powered 15 million miles of emission free driving last year.
Today, the two most significant of those issues, Energy and Transport, are converging; the technology in each sector has advanced rapidly and that gives us a big opportunity to fix how we power our homes and how we travel – by powering both with green energy.
He forecasts that by 2030 every new car should be electric or a plug-in hybrid, with these being the only cars on the road 2040.
The first Ecotricity sign appeared at Roadchef’s Sedgemoor services on Tuesday 26 January, with additional signs to be installed at Hamilton and Norton Canes over the coming weeks.
Ecotricity signs will soon be installed across all 28 Roadchef motorway locations.