Recharging from street lights and drive-through swappable battery stations are seen as two key solutions to convincing apartment-dwellers to own an electric vehicle.
The former of these solutions is being trialled quietly by the ACT government on the street outside 33 Eastlake Parade in Kingston.
Using a Belgian-built Schreder modular assembly unit, sustainability contractor Omexom is trialling on-street charging where drivers can plug their EV into the street light and top up for a few hours.
The ACT's only street light charger, which is visible on the Plugshare network, was installed in late August and has had a steady stream of charging visitors.
Streetlight EV charging is a well-established capability in European cities like London, which has around 1300 charging poles. Europe's apartment-dwellers are strong advocates of such systems because relatively few have any strata parking.
The Kingston module has a red light and green light at the top so people can drive along and see from a distance whether the 11kW charging unit is available.
Michael Rosetta, the business development manager for Omexom, which since 2018 has been swapping out the old halogen ACT street lights to controllable, more energy-efficient LED versions, said a second streetlight charger soon will be installed somewhere in the city.
"It's a solution which works well because it means there's no increase in the amount of street furniture and visual clutter, which is what people want," he said.
"And these new modular columns also have a lot of additional smart hardware built in to prepare for extra capability such as public wi fi and smart sensors."
Swappable batteries are not in Australia yet but are likely within the next 18 months.
For well over two years, Chinese EV maker Nio has been building battery swap stations domestically and across Europe which allows drivers to drive in one side with a depleted battery pack, wait five minutes, and drive out the other side with a full charge.
It effectively fully recharges your EV in a fraction of the time it takes to plug in, even when using a 250kW fast charger.
The Nio system also allows the customer to choose between a smaller battery pack for driving around the city, or a larger pack for longer trips.
More than 2500 battery swapping stations have been built by Nio. The latest generation Nio 4.0 station can complete a swap in 144 seconds, with or without anyone in the car.
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