BT to revamp first street cabinet as EV charging station

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BT will this month launch its first roadside electric-vehicle charging station, which will be connected to a street cabinet traditionally used for telecoms cables, as the FTSE 100 company seeks to tackle the UK’s charger shortage.

The telecoms group is exploring the potential to upgrade as many as 60,000 cabinets if a pilot is successful, with its start-up and digital incubation arm Etc powering up its first EV charging unit in East Lothian in Scotland as part of a UK-wide trial.

While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last year delayed a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, the government previously emphasised the importance of charging infrastructure for meeting net zero goals. In 2022 it set a target of 300,000 public chargers by 2030.

Tom Guy, managing director of Etc at BT Group, told the Financial Times the company was taking near end-of-life assets to use them “for next generation of services with EV”.

He said BT had looked at how its assets could be utilised to provide solutions to customer problems and macro challenges such as in the EV market.

“There’s a big gap between the chargers that we’ve got now and the chargers that we need in the future to really allow us to go fully electric,” Guy added.

There were 53,029 electric vehicle charging points across the UK at the end of November 2023, according to data collected by EV charging app Zapmap.

Research by BT in December found 60 per cent of petrol and diesel drivers surveyed thought the UK’s EV charging infrastructure was inadequate, while 78 per cent said not being able to charge an electric vehicle conveniently was a barrier to purchasing one.

The share of electric cars sold in the UK declined for the first time in 2023, down to 16.5 per cent from 16.6 per cent in 2022, according to figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and…