BT has turned a street cabinet into an EV charger, potential to do up to 60,000 more

BT Group’s innovation incubator – stupidly named Etc. – has had a novel idea. The team wants to turn the green cabinets on our residential streets into electric vehicle charging points. To understand more about the viability of such an idea, a pilot scheme has started in Scotland, retrofitting a cabinet in East Lothian.

Etc. cites the government’s plan to get 300,000 EV chargers installed in the national network by 2030, a target it’s behind on by about 53,000. The Etc. retrofit strategy could add as many as 60,000 charge points to the network, so the brand says.

Etc. tells us that it needs to understand the scope of the idea in full. There’s plenty to consider.

There’s the small issue of getting a sufficiently reliable power supply to the boxes, not to mention making sure that drivers can navigate the customer interface smoothly and avoid tripping themselves or fellow pedestrians up on a tangle of charging cables. There’s the more rarely noted issue of dog wee, too.

The dodgy positioning of some of these roadside cabinets is bound to wreak havoc in communities, where cars casually parking on street corners is deemed inappropriate. The cost of circumventing nimbyism isn’t cheap, but the project is worth it, according to the group.

Tom Guy, boss of Etc. at BT Group, said: “Our new charging solution is a huge step in bringing EV charging kerbside and exploring how we can address key barriers customers are currently facing. Working closely with local councils in Scotland and more widely across the UK, we are at a critical stage of our journey in tackling a very real customer problem that sits at the heart of our wider purpose to connect for good.

“This is a key step in our mission to build products and services right now that work for the future, with positive transformation at the heart.”

Celebrating the initiative at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, it’s been awarded an Innovation Honoree for outstanding design and engineering. Do you reckon it’s a practical solution?