Liverpool’s plan to triple on-street charging will put it in country’s top 3

Liverpool City Council has appointed ubitricity, a wholly own Shell subsidiary, to install a network of 300 on-street electric vehicle (EV) charge points – with the locations chosen by residents and businesses.

The additional charge points are set to treble Liverpool City Council’s existing network of charge points to 450. According to Government statistics from October 2022, this will make Liverpool the third largest public charging network in the UK behind London and Coventry.

By investing in charging infrastructure, Liverpool City Council says it is looking to address the north-south divide in EV adoption and take a big step towards achieving its carbon net zero target by 2030. A lack of accessible public EV charging points is a commonly cited barrier to EV adoption, and analysis from the Department of Transport found that as of July 2022, the North-West had 76% fewer public EV chargers per 100,000 people than in London.

The rollout comes as part of a two-part project which will see ubitricity take over the repair of Liverpool’s existing charging infrastructure and then rollout more charge points to help enable residents to make a transition to EV.

The new slow-rated ubitricity charge points, which are installed directly into existing street lampposts, charge at a speed of up to 5kW and take just under 2 hours to install. The rollout is planned for key residential and commercial locations, allowing residents to easily charge hybrid and electric vehicles on the street where they live.

in 2019 Liverpool City Council declared a climate emergency and unveiled its 2030 Net Zero Liverpool Action Plan, which laid out a roadmap to tackle its carbon footprint.

Liverpool’s goal is to make EV charging accessible for everyone, with a particular focus on residents who do not have access to private off-street parking and charging. The rollout is lead by community requests, with the Liverpool City Council receiving over 10 requests a week for new public charge points.

Cllr Dan Barrington, Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Highways for Liverpool City Council said, “This programme puts down a real mark of intent to provide the necessary infrastructure to help the move away from petrol and diesel powered cars. The fact that the roll-out is being led by community requests means the points are going where the demand is needed most which means they’ll be getting maximum usage. And hopefully the demand will grow meaning the need for more charging points to be installed.”

The rollout of the new charge points is set to complete by Spring.