The EV revolution is unstoppable but how will we charge our cars at home? Jamie Willsdon of Future Group takes a closer look at the issues for Property Managers and their residents.
Take-up of the UK’s electric vehicle (EV) charge point market is set to grow by just under a third this year, despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic , according to energy market research consultancy Delta-EE. With three-quarters of all UK drivers parking off-road, 71% of those charge points will be installed at home.
The Daily Telegraph reports that, as part of its plan to bump start the economy, the Government is now considering offering drivers up to £6,000 to swap their ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars for electric vehicles. The latest Tesla is now outselling the much cheaper Honda Civic in California and all three of Britain’s biggest car manufacturers are now putting electric cars at the heart of their manufacturing strategy. Add that to the fact that by 2035, as the government announced in February, any new car or van purchased will be an EV, and that sounds like a welcome boost not only for the motor industry but also for charge point installers and suppliers.
What does this mean for residents of blocks of flats?
With the government committing £1bn to new charging points, the momentum behind green transport is unstoppable. But what about the estimated 4.5m homeowners in flats? Home chargers are clearly the most convenient way to charge your car but for leaseholders home charging may be harder than it sounds.
If you own your own parking space close to a power source it should be relatively easy to install a charger at a block of flats. But if you do, you’re in the minority. Most people living in a residential block with a shared car park find that if they raise the issue of charge points they quickly find there are a number of barriers to installation.
These include:
- Restrictive lease terms
- Power loading issues
- Access to existing power infrastructure
How can we help?
At Future Fuel we are working with a number of property managers to overcome these problems, one or more of which are common when charge point projects are embarked upon.
Our advice is to ensure you are armed with the answers to a number of key questions right from the start of the project:
- How many parking spaces are there in the car park?
- Is your parking external or internal?
- Is it accessible to the public?
- Are they shared between residents or individually allocated?
- Are your neighbours interested in EVs/EV charging? If so how many?
The chances are that there will be more than one resident who is interested in going electric. If there is a group of potential EV drivers, it will be easier to approach the landlord or freeholder with a proposal.
In the new build sector, many developers of residential blocks, particularly in the build-to-rent market, have been installing charge points as standard for several years. However, this segment of the market has its own issues to deal with.
Early solutions specified and installed by developers in the last five years are now typically being overseen by property managers who are increasingly coming to us with their problems. We are finding more and more chargers from this period that are not classed as “Smart Chargers”. That could now mean they are categorised as redundant or non-compliant due to changes in the law.
This is because older installations used a Radio Frequency Identification or REFID card, which is a contactless method for reading information and allows the user access to a charger. Normally these cards are licensed by the block to the user but the charges levied are a lottery for both the EV user and the service charge account.
Here’s An Example:
Residents are licensed a RFID Card at £300pa. Car one is a big Tesla, driven by a sales rep travelling the country. For £300 a year, this resident really benefits from the communal electricity supply at a cost to other residents.
Car two is an EV Smart Car, just used to pop to the shops or the gym at the weekends. This car is probably paying the correct money.
So if a block is still using an RFID card system, charges cannot be fairly apportioned. Both the Landlord and Tenant Act and The Energy Act, state that the resale of energy (which is effectively what we are talking about here) should be prohibited if units of use (in this case kWhs) cannot be measured and billed accordingly, or if the rate cannot not be fairly apportioned.
When it comes to EV charging, apportionment is just not possible in the same way that a service charge can be split according to floor area of a flat. Car one might be a taxi clocking up thousands of miles each week, whereas car two may just pop to the shops on a Wednesday. How can that usage be fairly apportioned and the cost allocated to the service charge?
Developers may not be keen to hear that the solution is to replace their old-style charge points with the new generation of smart chargers. These have remote billing platforms, based on PAYG, whereby the user pays for exact usage, just like we do when we pay to park in the High Street. Monies are metered and payments are automatically collected and dropped into the service charge fund, ensuring EV owners are fairly charged.
Our Collaboration With Pod Point
At Future Fuel our collaboration with Pod Point, one of the UK’s leading charger providers to install PAYG home chargers in residential blocks. Their view is that with EVs set to dominate new car sales by the mid-to-late 2020s, it won’t be long before residents will expect EV charging to be offered as a standard amenity.
Pod Point believes the whole landscape for building owners is about to change because offering EV charging will start to have a material impact on the appeal and value of a property. Co-Op Insurance recently found 40% of its customers already expect homes without charging provision risk losing value as a result. So providing charging facilities will be as much about protecting and enhancing value, as it will be about making individual flat owner’s electric motoring more convenient.
With the cut-off date for ICE vehicles only 15 years away, we’re about to witness what Pod Point founder and CEO Erik Fairbairn describes as “total automotive disruption”. The residential blocks sector needs to be ready to adapt – and fast. And the government must take on board the problems faced by leaseholders and renters who are facing barriers to rapid take-up of EVs. In the meantime, we would advise property managers to continue to talk to charge point providers and installers and to their freeholder clients to find solutions that work for their residents, rather than risk them being left behind as we move towards a clean, green transport revolution.
For more information contact Jamie Willsdon of Future Fuel Solutions.
