Car chargers spark a revolution

Calvey Taylor-Haw: founder of Electromotive
Kasmira Jefford

He created a way to charge electric cars but now Calvey Taylor-Haw must make it pay.
Taylor-Haw, a photographer who tinkered with cars, came up with a prototype charging station five years ago after his brother was looking to buy an electric vehicle.
“He lived in an apartment and we wondered how he would charge his car,” said Taylor-Haw. “There was no infrastructure to do it.”
That question led Taylor-Haw, 52, and Greg Simmons, an automotive engineer, to investigate. With their company, Elektromotive, they had already tried to produce a lithium-ion battery powered motor scooter for commuters that proved to be financially unviable.
Taylor-Haw cashed in his savings and Simmons’ consultancy, H Technologies, absorbed the research and development costs. They produced their first prototype charging station at the end of 2004.
It took a year to persuade councils to take them seriously. Then, there were few electric cars on the street. “The idea of the charging station was really in a market that was in its infancy,” said Taylor-Haw. “There was a lot of convincing to do.”
There are now 250 Elektrobays in the UK and 1,000 expected to be installed before the end of the year. The charging points, made in Brighton, cost £3,000 each, not counting the cost of connecting them to the grid.
Taylor-Haw’s brainchild is more than just a charging point. It records the time and date, and measures the electricity consumption when a registered user charges their car. Owners sign up on the company website or through their councils and pay an annual fee of £100.
Westminster in central London has the most stations: 45 in car parks and 17 more on the street, with 330 registered users. This should grow quickly — 1,700 electric cars are already registered for exemption from London’s congestion charge scheme, and Boris Johnson, the mayor, has pledged to install 25,000 charging stations by 2015.
At the Copenhagen summit last month, Johnson announced that no Londoner would be farther than a mile from a charging point by 2012.
There are still hurdles to overcome. “London is struggling to find the real estate to put the charging stations on,” Taylor-Haw said.
And electric cars are expensive compared with their conventional counterparts. They range from £7,000 for the most basic model to £101,900 for the Tesla Roadster, which has supercar performance.
They also have a limited range — about 100 miles at best, compared with 300-odd miles for conventional vehicles, which should create a strong demand for public charging points.
They also take time to charge — an hour to charge up to 80% and another five to charge to capacity using an Elektrobay.
“At the moment people are hooked on the car taking five minutes to fill up and having 300 miles’ range,” Taylor-Haw said. “Electric cars just won’t work like that, so if there is going to be widespread use, people have to change the way they think.”
He plans to provide chargers for commercial use that would cut the process to 90 minutes from flat to full. He also predicts the car industry will have a model that can run for 200 miles on one charge within five years.