Vauxhall has announced its role as the first car maker to partner with JustCharge, a community-based charging network from the creators of the community parking app, JustPark.
JustCharge is a matchmaking platform, providing a service to both private electric vehicle charge point owners and for drivers who don’t have access to off-street parking and rely on public chargers. In the UK, this impacts more than 40% of households, affecting not only apartment dwellers, but also those in properties with rented driveways.
Though there’s no integration with the in-cabin infotainment system, Vauxhall hopes its endorsement of the JustCharge platform will demonstrate to motorists hesitant about the switch to electric that alternative options are available to them. To date, public charge points haven’t been as reliable as motorists would hope, since they aren’t always available when required—whether there’s a queue, or a broken device.
Like rival Co Charger, JustCharge offers the reassurance that being able to book a regular slot will help put EV drivers at ease. Vauxhall believes drivers will be able to capitalise on the household cost savings that come from running and maintaining an EV, if they know just a short walk in their neighbourhood will enable easier access to charging points with guaranteed availability.
The other side to the JustCharge app is that it lets owners of private EV charging points monetise the devices from their driveway. Residential charge points tend to sit unused for around 88% of the time, according to JustCharge calculations. The booking system has its limitations, in that there are only so many overnight customers any one charge point can support. According to Co Charger, charge point owners can earn as much as £1,000 per year renting their charge point out.
At the end of March, the government is stopping the £350 subsidy towards fitting a domestic charging point, so installation companies are finding themselves inundated with requests for jobs, which need to be fulfilled by the expiry date of 31st March to make householders eligible to claim back the discount.
Vauxhall’s new electric car range includes the all-electric Corsa, Mokka-e, hybrid Grandland and forthcoming hybrid Astra. The Mokka’s claimed range is over 200 miles range—a figure Vauxhall has been able to improve with recent software updates, shifting from 201 to 209 miles. Competitive with the range of rival models from Volkswagen and Ford, there’s decreasing concern about the range of electric vehicles. After all, motorists average only 142 miles a week.
As such, focus is turning to improvements in the infrastructure, still the much-maligned reality of EV ownership and usage. Just as topping up with fuel every day would be unusual, plugging an electric vehicle in every day is somewhat of a misnomer. The option of a local charge point becoming bookable on a weekly basis through such community networks, coupled with portable solutions like the ZipCharge Go, arguably means making the switch to an electric vehicle has been easier than it’s ever been before.
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