Community EV Charging: What is it?

You may have heard the term bandied around here and there. It's actually an idea upon which VoltShare was built. Community EV charging is a way for EV drivers to access a larger number of chargepoints around the country where private homeowners can rent out their chargepoints for anyone to use.

Community EV charging simply means sharing out your EV charger.

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Think sharing out your home or items via Airbnb, or other lending services. In this day and age, more and more people are shying away from personal possessions or owning something.

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Why should you share your EV charger?

The answer we would give is, why not?! Not only would you be providing essential charging services for other fellow drivers in need, but you would also be contributing to the global movement towards a future where full electrification of our transport and renewable energy can coexist in harmony.

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Monetise your car park & charger

By sharing your EV charger, you can earn money by charging for electricity AND parking. This means that with conservative values, you could be earning profits of hundreds of pounds a year!

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Supercharge the country's charging infrastructure

As it stands, the projected charging infrastructure would not be sufficient to cater to a growing number of electric vehicles. There must be a concerted effort by industry leaders to help develop a mature infrastructure where electric transport can truly flourish.

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Do good

Is there any other reason better than this? Many EV drivers do not have access to private driveways so private charging is impossible for them. Can you imagine the fear of not being able to travel around or get to important meetings because your car's battery is drained? Neither can we! Sharing out your charger to your community would be helping them out in their times of need.

Finally, as an owner of a private charger, you're (likely) not in the profit-making business and would more than often set reasonable charging and parking costs. This means that your neighbours and community would find it cheaper to charge their EVs. Win-win-win.

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How VoltShare is driving change

Pun intended. We're a Tech-for-Good company which means doing good is our business and it's what drives us. In fact, as a Tech-for-Good company, the main Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are a part of our ethos are:

• ‍SDG 7: Affordable and clean energy
• SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities
• SDG 13: Climate Action

‍Our reason for being extends beyond a normal business whose main focus is to generate profits; our reason for being is to improve social and environmental conditions. Here are the four main good that we're looking to achieve.

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Reduced consumption

Community EV charging doesn't only enable a cleaner future but encourages reduced consumption. Our sharing economy model means that even homeowners who do not wish to buy a charger can simply tap into the vast number of already available ones in their neighbourhood. Furthermore, we take in unwanted chargers and do what we can to recycle or upcycle the components.

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Improving equitable access

The lack of private charging access for many people around the country is a very real problem. The experience of driving an EV can be quite cumbersome; they have to, not only find available public chargers near them, but also be subjected to price fluctuations from chargepoint operators. For us, we enable our users to set their own pricing and let market forces determine what's fair!

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Democratisation of EV charging

Competition. Competition. Competition. Having a handful of chargepoint operators around the country can be harmful for drivers. Not only does it mean that the availability of chargers are dependent on the cost-profit analysis, their costs can be high if there's no competition.

What we're doing here is enabling regular people to contribute towards the charging infrastructure and not be solely dependent on the public chargepoint operators.

Our solution is simple and empowered by our community–we’re creating domestic chargers designed and developed for private and public use.

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Not only do the chargers have to be designed slightly differently than normal domestic ones (such as uninterruptible internet connection), the security and user experience must be specially designed. That has been the chief focus of VoltShare's research and development efforts.

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Drastically improving accessibility

There is a limit to how many public chargers can be installed. By connecting the vast number (hundreds and thousands) of private chargers to our network, we are improving accessibility around the country. Drivers wouldn't have to think about whether they have a charger at their destination, they would simply go there and find an available private charger to use.

For instance, almost all towns or cities have homes available for rent via Airbnb or Booking.com. That's true accessibility and convenience. Here at VoltShare, we're looking drive change and re-imagine a future where electric transport doesn't have to be prohibitive in any way.

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Everyone can share

Whether you are a homeowner or a business owner with parking space, our complete solution works for you. Simply install a VoltShare charger and the service to share out your charger is provided for free, for life! We're also developing smart tools on our VoltShare platform to help integrate non-VoltShare chargers under our smart platform.

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We're looking for partners

We want to work with people who share the same principles and ethos as we do. If you're looking to work with us on building your community to have a local community powered EV charging cluster, let us know and we'd be more than happy to drive change with you. Contact us to start the conversation!