Electric cars. With Ubitricity, you charge from street lamps
Mobility — di Rudi Bressa
Innovative and original is the idea from German startup Ubitricity, which transforms street lamps into low-cost charging points.
Electric cars. With Ubitricity, you charge from street lamps
Innovative and original is the idea from German startup Ubitricity, which transforms street lamps into low-cost charging points.
Charging electric cars anywhere in the city, transforming public street lamps or simple electrical sockets into charging points, and above all cutting infrastructure costs by around 90 per cent. This is the project of Ubitricity, a company founded a few years ago in Berlin that is now growing in the capital and in other German cities.
The system consists of a socket to connect to the electricity source, a cable and a mobile device capable of measuring and communicating to the operator the amount of energy used. The idea is as simple as it is ingenious: electric car owners will no longer need to plan their journeys around the location of charging points, but will be able to charge their vehicles practically anywhere and pay the operator for the electricity purchased at the prevailing rates.
"Like with the mobile phone, the mobile metering system in the charging cable radically changes the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles," explains Knut Hechtfischer, founder and managing director of Ubitricity. "With a metering system installed in the charging cable, drivers will be able to purchase electricity from energy suppliers through a contract of their choice, wherever they are." No more expensive charging points that are still hard to find, with an installed meter that records withdrawals. Instead, an all-inclusive portable package. All that will be needed is a source of electricity.
The first supplier to have taken up the challenge of large-scale electrification is Grundgrün, which in collaboration with Ubitricity has installed around a hundred charging points and plans to have a socket in every street lamp.
This could represent a radical change, much like what happened a few decades ago with the advent of the mobile phone. If before, in order to make a call, you had to reach a public place or a phone box, today all you need is a smartphone and a subscription chosen from among the hundreds of offers from various operators. The future development of smart grids will further support this new service. In all likelihood, in no more than ten years, charging an electric car will be just as straightforward.