Electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure has proliferated in recent years, but some drivers are now unhappy about the length of time this infrastructure takes to charge their vehicles.

Some drivers in and around Bicester have complained that the town is not fit with enough ‘rapid’ and ‘ultra-rapid’ charging stations. Meaning that they wait for over 8 hours for their EV to fully charge.

A consortium of partners in Oxfordshire, including Oxfordshire County Council and the University of Oxford, received a grant under the ‘park and charge’ scheme through Innovate UK in 2021 to develop 20 EV charging sites across Oxfordshire.

Cherwell District Council are among the councils who are supporting the scheme and hosting the EV charging hubs. The first installation under this scheme was made at Bicester’s Cattle Market car park in May, 2021. The site has 12 fast EV chargers, and work is underway to install a further 16 at Claremont car park in Bicester too – ready for use in the coming weeks.

Following this, 18 more charging sites are planned across the county.  

However, despite the big push on charging infrastructure, one driver coming through Bicester from Evesham said: “Can't believe that Bicester Village - and even the whole of Bicester doesn't have a RAPID electric vehicle charge point - like a Chademo type 2, 50 kwh charger - to enable us to recharge our car quickly. The whole of Bicester has piddly 7kwh charge points which take 8+ hours to recharge a car.”

Councillor Dan Sames said: “As it stands, there aren’t any plans within Oxfordshire to install ultra-rapid chargers for this year. We are just focused on fast chargers up to 22KW. We are interested in pursuing the rapid 50KW and ultra-rapid 100KW facilities in future in the right locations, but it is a question of funding as to how those projects will be allocated across Oxfordshire.”

He added: “I’ve had a few letters – somebody was asking about ultra-rapid charging points. Obviously getting an effective charging strategy across the district, and county, is something we are keen to pursue.”

Bicester residents’ comments on the Facebook post ranged from suggesting the poster of the status should buy their own charger, to pointing out that the Cattle Market car park has 22KW chargers.

One resident said: “There are 22KW chargers at the Cattle Market car park in the town. There are also some at Bicester Village itself. There is a hyper charging station at Banbury which has 150KW chargers. Cherwell Valley Services have 50KW. All of the above can easily be factored into a journey from Evesham.”

 

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