Gridserve celebrates Electric Highway upgrade milestone
Gridserve has announced it has upgraded all its chargers across the UK’s motorways, just ten months after acquiring the Electric Highway charging network from Ecotricity.
Since June last year Gridserve has replaced over 300 medium power Electric Highway chargers at over 130 motorway service areas run by Extra, Moto, Roadchef, Welcome Break and Westmorland. The upgraded network now also offers contactless card payment, 24-hour support and real-time status updates.
In addition to upgrading the medium power chargers, Gridserve says it has also started to deliver new High Power Electric Hubs, which consist of six or more high power chargers, with three new sites already operational and a further nine currently under construction.
The Swansea, Exeter and Burton-in-Kendal Electric Hubs, with chargers capable of speeds up to 350kW, have transformed charging in these areas, it says. The sites on major arterial routes in south Wales, south west and north west England, collectively offer 24 new chargers that can deliver up to 100 miles of range in less than 10 minutes.
Gridserve describes the original Electric Highway network as “created in the early days of electric vehicles and a critical step in enabling travel for early adopters of electric vehicles. This decade, with the 2030 ban on new petrol or diesel vehicles, significant growth continues to be needed to support the mass market transition to electric vehicles.”
Gridserve CEO, Toddington Harper says, “As an early adopter of electric vehicles, the Electric Highway network played an essential role in enabling me to make the switch. However those days are long gone and Gridserve’s focus is delivering an EV charging network fit for purpose to support the mass-market transition to electric vehicles.
Following the start of upgrades in 2021, within a matter of months the Electric Highway achieved the highest customer satisfaction rating in the network’s 10-year history, add Harper. “Headwinds caused by global supply chain issues, manufacturing and transportation delays, compounded with new contractual issues to work through, made completing our upgrade plans more challenging than we had initially anticipated, so we are really pleased to be able to celebrate this milestone.”