Everything Electric CARS
8 HN mentions · mentioned in 6 months, 2019–2025
6:58 · 189K views · Jun 16, 2017
A Fully Charged episode on Ubitricity, a German company that turns ordinary street lamp posts into roughly 5 kW overnight EV charge points, with a locking cable and managed billing.
HN points to it as the real-world example for the garage orphan problem, meaning EV owners with no home charger.
8 comments from Hacker News
Robert Llewellyn (previously of Red Dwarf fame) covered this idea eight years ago (July 2017) on his 'electrify' channel: > The simple and very commonplace lamp post will soon become a ubiquitous charge point for electric cars. They charge at about 5 kW, or 16 amps, not super fast but overnight charging is all most drivers need. Ubitricity is a German based company who've come up with a simple, cheap to install and well managed system for more people on more streets to adopt electric cars. * this video See also pop-up chargers from six years ago: * [LINK]
> The number of people in the UK and Ireland that have to park overnight on the street is way too high to start banning ICE vehicles within the next decade. You're not wrong (and I too am a "garage orphan"—neither a garage or even a driveway), but there are some options being developed. The YT channel Fully Charged featured two a while back: * Street lamps: this video * Pop-up charger: [LINK] I'm a bit skeptical.
This. I get more than enough juice out of an Ubitricity socket for an overnight charge. Here is a screenshot of the Tesla app showing the car charging on an Ubitricity plug.... [LINK] Source: this video , from Fully Charged. Video features a council official (who own the lights) and Ubitricity CEO.
> All new street lights (as of a couple of years ago) have to have charging points built-in […] If anyone wants to see an example of light pole charging, the Fully Charged YT channel had an episode of one example: * this video See also pop-up chargers for streets without poles: * [LINK]
Fully Charged did an episode on this: * this video However, in many cities the posts are not in the sidewalk, but on people's properties, so as to allow clearer pedestrian paths. This is generally true in Toronto (where the story is written), especially on residential side-streets.