Skip to main content

Beijing to trial street lamp EV chargers

Beijing has launched a pilot project to transform street lamps to serve as charging poles for electric cars. Eighty-eight high-pressure sodium lamps on a road in the city have been converted into energy-saving LED lamps. Eight charging poles have been installed and put into trial operation using the energy saved from the new LED lamps, said the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission. The charging poles work day and night, reducing charging demand for electric taxis and private cars in the
January 12, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Beijing has launched a pilot project to transform street lamps to serve as charging poles for electric cars.

Eighty-eight high-pressure sodium lamps on a road in the city have been converted into energy-saving LED lamps. Eight charging poles have been installed and put into trial operation using the energy saved from the new LED lamps, said the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

The charging poles work day and night, reducing charging demand for electric taxis and private cars in the area, said the commission.

Beijing plans to expand the project to other areas and intends to build 10,000 public charging poles for electric cars by 2017, to be installed in airports and train stations, public parking lots, malls and supermarket parking lots, highway rest areas, electric car dealers and gas stations.

The Chinese government has been encouraging consumers to buy electric vehicles as a solution to the country's pollution problems, but the plan has been hindered by a bottleneck in the charging infrastructure.

China's electric car production jumped fourfold to 83,900 vehicles in 2014, according to the 4821 Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In 2014, output of pure electric passenger cars rose 300 percent from a year earlier to 37,800, with plug-in hybrid passenger cars reaching 16,700 units.

Measures including tax exemptions, price subsidies and requirements for government departments to buy green cars are in place. However, new energy cars still account for only a small proportion of total output. In the first 11 months of 2014, China's automotive industry produced 21.1 million vehicles.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Emissions reductions targets to have major impact on transport
    October 28, 2015
    As bold moves aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions have been introduced in California, David Crawford looks at the ramifications for transportation. California Governor Jerry Brown’s recent dramatic raising of the bar on emissions reduction policy for the state has won him praise from Japan, Australia, Europe and the secretariat of the critical UN conference on climate change being held in Paris in November/December 2015. His April 2015 executive order aimed at bringing emissions to 40% below 1990 lev
  • Road user charging potential solution to transportation problems
    December 14, 2012
    A number of new and highly significant open road tolling schemes have just been launched or are soon to ‘go live’. Systems of road user charging are flexing their muscles as the means to solve politically sensitive transportation problems, reports Jon Masters. Gothenburg, January 2013, will be the time and place for the launch of the next city congestion charging scheme in Europe. In a separate development, Los Angeles County’s tolled Metro ExpressLanes began operating in November 2012 – the latest in a ser
  • Red light violations increase during summer driving season: report
    May 21, 2015
    The US National Coalition for Safer Roads has released new data on red-light running, which revealed an increase in the number of violations that occurred during peak periods of summer travel in 2014. According to the statistics, more than 3.7 million drivers in the United States ran a red light in 2014. A large percentage of these violations occurred during the peak summer travel weekends of Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day. Red-light running incidents during each of these major summer t
  • Survey finds varied autonomy and safety technology preferences for new vehicles
    August 4, 2017
    New research on consumer preferences for full autonomy in new vehicles finds the technology is not yet popular among a broad audience, according to analysts at IHS Markit. Ironically, the same audience ranked it among the very features they would be willing to pay the most for in their next new vehicle purchase. Blind spot detection ranked highest as the most desired features among all audiences, young and old, and propensity to pay for it varied by region, with the US respondents reporting they would be wi