BP Pulse is making £2 million available to deliver what it has described as “radical improvement” in the reliability of older UK electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.
The EV charging firm has agreed £400,000 in infrastructure investment to replace more than 50 legacy chargepoints, which it said are typically owned by local authorities and were originally installed with government grant funding.
A further £1.5 million of funding has been made available for chargepoint owners, with BP Pulse to work closely with local authorities and other chargepoint owners over the coming months to replace older infrastructure as quickly as possible.
BP Pulse explained how a decade has passed since the first significant rollout of public charging infrastructure under the Plugged in Places scheme, with many of these chargepoints not installed with long-term sustainability in mind. This has led to EV drivers being “faced with chargepoints that are no longer usable”.
Already in Milton Keynes BP Pulse has replaced the majority of legacy third-party manufacturer rapid chargers, upgrading them to its own 50kW chargers, which include contactless payment terminals.
Matteo de Renzi, CEO of BP pulse, said that while the company’s main focus remains on expanding its network, “we know that many of the issues experienced by drivers come from legacy charging infrastructure, so our investment in upgrading it will significantly improve the experience of EV drivers across the country”.
BP Pulse was created in December 2020 as a rebrand of both BP Chargemaster and the Polar network, bringing the two together under one name.
Since then, it has partnered with Jumptech to streamline the installation of chargers by simplifying processes and improving information flows and signed an exclusive Memorandum of Understanding with FreeWire Technologies to deploy its Boost Charger at its UK operations.
