Nissan teams up with green energy company to push for electric car road signs

Ecotricity has joined forces with the carmaker to kickstart a national discussion on EV refuelling

At the moment it’s a hit and miss affair to find out where the recharging points are

If you own an electric vehicle and you’re away from your usual run of roads, do you know where the nearest refuelling point is? Are you thinking about moving over to an EV, but are put off by the apparent lack of places to ‘refuel’? Nissan and Ecotricity are trying to get the UK government to address these concerns.

Green energy company Ecotricity has teamed up with Nissan to kickstart a national discussion on EV refuelling. They want the government to create a series of official signs that everyone will recognise means there is an electricity charging point nearby.

There are approximately 9000 charging points across the country

At the moment it’s a hit and miss affair, often done online, to find out where the recharging points are. There are approximately 9000 of them across the country but there’s no signage and no agreement on what those signs should be, to indicate where the refuelling points are.

Given the number of EVs on the roads now, perhaps it is time that we introduced a coherent programme across the country. Nissan and Ecotricity want to achieve this for two reasons: one, to simply help drivers find a refuelling point, and two, to raise awareness of how many points there are, to interact with drivers possibly considering the switch to EV.

There’s no EV signage and no agreement on what those signs should be

Nissan UK’s MD, Jim Wright, hopes the government would oversee regulations and agreements, but didn’t expect government to pay for it. He sees that as the job of the private sector, of stakeholders in the automotive and sustainability sectors. He acknowledged that the UK government had already expended resources on EVs in other ways, such as the £5000 support for every EV purchase.