Skip to main content

Scottish council plans free electric car charge points

Motorists in Aberdeenshire, Scotland will soon be able to charge their electric vehicles and use solar-powered parking machines in town centres across county. Twenty of the solar-powered parking meters will be fitted at a cost of £80,000 which allows motorists to pay by cash, debit or credit card or their mobile phone. The council heard that the current parking machines are prone to theft and often break down. It was suggested that the redundant power supply from the ageing parking units could then be used
December 6, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
Motorists in Aberdeenshire, Scotland will soon be able to charge their electric vehicles and use solar-powered parking machines in town centres across county.

Twenty of the solar-powered parking meters will be fitted at a cost of £80,000 which allows motorists to pay by cash, debit or credit card or their mobile phone.

The council heard that the current parking machines are prone to theft and often break down. It was suggested that the redundant power supply from the ageing parking units could then be used for electric car charge points.

The charge points, which would be offered to motorists in Banchory, Banff, Crathie, Ellon, Fraserburgh, Huntly, Inverurie, Peterhead, Stonehaven and Turriff would be free to use.

Mark Skilling, Strategy Manager for infrastructure, said: "We have the opportunity here to use the power supplies for something else. It is fair to say that the uptake across Scotland for electric vehicles is lower and slower than people expected it to be.

"We are going through changes and would like to see at least one charge point in each of our busiest town centres."

Related Content

  • Research reveals motoring costs cause many cars in the UK to go unused
    June 19, 2017
    Analysis from car sharing platform HyaCar indicates that nearly half of people in the UK cannot afford to own a car and those who do spend upwards of £2,500 each year on its general upkeep, excluding costs for petrol and overall depreciation.
  • Vaisala: Weather data is vital for connected vehicles
    August 26, 2016
    Vaisala’s Dr Kevin Petty explains why the weather will continue to play a big part in road safety and traffic management in the smart cities of the future. The world is becoming increasingly connected. Thanks to advances in information and communications technology, the cities we live in are becoming ‘smart’, with everything from education to law enforcement managed by integrated tech solutions in a bid to improve quality of life.
  • Monitoring and transparency preserve enforcement's reputation
    July 30, 2012
    What can be done to preserve automated enforcement's reputation in the face of media and public criticism? Here, system manufacturers and suppliers talk about what they think are the most appropriate business models. Recent events in Italy only served to once again to push automated enforcement into the media spotlight. At the heart of the matter were the numerous alleged instances of local authorities and their contract suppliers of enforcement services colluding to illegally shorten amber signal phase tim
  • EV charging station market in the US has grown immensely
    July 27, 2012
    New analysis from Frost & Sullivan says that the electric vehicle (EV) charging station market in North America has grown immensely, helped along by favourable government level (federal, state and municipal) incentives and subsidies for the purchase of EVs. The government is extending these plans to the installation of charging station and funding programmes such as ECOtality's EV project, which is trying to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure in six major states.