"It’s all about the Charlottes,” says Joel Teague, CEO of Co Charger, a new company that claims to have the answer to that rather large elephant in the EV room: how to charge your car at home when you don’t have a charger, never mind a driveway.
According to Co Charger, at least 40% of UK residents live in properties where installing a private charger isn’t an option, such as flats or terraced houses. For them, EV ownership is impossible unless they can charge at work (to where fewer people travel these days) or they have a public charger nearby (that works).
Co Charger addresses this problem by enabling the 200,000 or so people with a parking space and a charger at home to share them with their neighbours who have neither. He calls such people hosts and their customers chargees.
Some chargees might already have an electric car, but Teague says that Co Charger’s main aim is to attract those thousands of people who would have if only they could charge it conveniently, reliably and affordably. The company’s phone app makes this possible, he claims.
“The idea for the service came to me when I took delivery of my first EV, a Renault Zoe, but was having to wait for my home charger to be fitted,” he says. “I asked an EV-owning neighbour if I could borrow his charger for a few quid each time I needed it. It was a light-bulb moment when I thought of all those people who would like an EV but who don’t have a driveway on which to charge it; they could borrow a neighbour’s.”
And that brings us to Charlotte Hancock. She lives near Exeter and is one of those people who Teague thought would benefit from his idea. Previously an EV dreamer without a charger or a driveway, she’s now, thanks to a Co Charger host who has both, on course to get her first EV.
“We had considered buying an electric car, but because we don’t have a driveway on which to charge it, we ruled it out and soldiered on with our Skoda Superb diesel,” she says. “Then we became aware of Co Charger. We downloaded the app and found a host less than half a mile away who would let us use their driveway and charger. We immediately decided to replace our Superb with the new Skoda Enyaq iV electric SUV.”
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I don't even like the neighbour parking at the kerb ouside my house, never mind on the drive nicking my electric.
Sounds like 'pie in the sky' thinking to me.
Are you allowed to have more than one charger on a private property?, I'm not in the position of having to charge a car yet, but, I'd think twice if I had to trudge half a mile, a mile really to charge my car, I'd sooner stick with an old ICE Car.
Great in theory, but one of the many questions an insurance company asks you when you take out a policy, is, where do you park/keep your car over night, I dont think on a random persons drive whilst I charge it is an option. What happens if its a different postcode with higher insurance costs, or if your car is broken into or damaged whilst its half a mile away being charged?