Oxford to become Electric City

By Tim Bearder
BBC Oxford

The Mini E was constructed at the Oxford BMW plant

In June 2009 the hydrogen car firm River Simple hinted that they would choose Oxford as the first city to trial 50 experimental cars.

Today it has been announced that Oxford will have charging points for electric vehicles.

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) said: "We were looking across the UK for cities which had a real commitment to low carbon transport."

The City Council has also made a financial promise towards the scheme.

It is expected to pay for part of the installation of the infrastructure needed with some of the costs being met by the ETI.

Their spokesman, David Clarke, said that at this stage the cost of setting up the technology is unclear and will vary from city to city.

In the first phase of the scheme there are likely to be approximately 100 charging points in Oxford.

Nationally, of the £11m budget for the project, £3m is being set aside for the initial planning of where the charging points will be located.

Funds will also go towards collecting the data to see how these points are then subsequently used.

There are other factors - besides money - that seem to make Oxford the perfect test location for these new technologies.

The University is already the home to some ground-breaking environmental research.

Dr Malcolm McCulloch is a lecturer in Engineering Science and part of the Electric Power Group that was instrumental in the development of the motor which powers River Simple's new car.

His work has helped get the carbon emissions of these cars down to about 30g/km which is between a third to a quarter better than the emissions achieved by a Toyota Prius.

As well as the research done here there is a real passion to make a change. In June the Carbon Trust said "Oxford City Council is an authority that can make things happen." Local businesses are also willing to embrace the new technology.

Anthony Robinson is the managing director of Robinson's Moving and Storing based in Abingdon. He says "I've had some plans for probably about 12 months now to convert our fleet to electric.

"The problem has been that the electric technology means you have to recharge, and if you haven't got enough charging points then your vehicles have a limited range. The introduction of new charging points to multiple cities - and Oxford being one of them - means that we can extend our fleet further.

"It means that we can move and embrace the new technology in our next generation of machines that we use here."

Oxfordshire seems to have the desire and expertise to lead the field and figures suggest it is an important field to be ahead in. According to the 2001 census 55.2% of the population travel to work using a car, a figure that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

As Dr McCulloch points out: "We've got the choice. We can either try push through a strong technology and get [carbon emissions] down to those levels [3g/km] or we are going to have to change the way we live our lives and the way I know humanity behaves is that changing our lives is a far more difficult task than trying to get much better technology."

But David Clarke doesn't see electric cars as the whole answer: "For a good proportion of the population who want to do long distance motorway travel routinely day in day out you can see that a liquid-fuelled car would probably remain the best option but from a low carbon point of view that says that would have to be a bio-fuel car."

Whichever way it pans out it looks like Oxford is going to be at the heart of the research, development and testing of the green technology of the future.