Credit: Voltpost
Voltpost has launched two Level 2 chargers that mount on parking garage ceilings and on walls, avoiding trenching and cutting installation costs by up to 70% according to the company. Europe’s revised buildings directive requires member states to make it easier for tenants to install charging points, with transposition due this May.
Voltpost has built a charger you attach to a ceiling. Its new Air Ceiling Mount hangs in parking garages with retractable cables so the floor stays clear, alongside an Air Surface Mount that fixes to walls or a pedestal bolted into pavement.
The product is really the installation. Nothing is trenched and no pavement is dug up, so a fitting takes hours instead of days, which Voltpost says cuts installation costs by as much as 70%.
The problem is genuine and badly served. Almost all the running-cost advantage of an electric car comes from charging at home overnight, and public fast charging can cost close to filling a tank.
Voltpost’s better-known product is a lamppost. The company converts existing lampposts and telephone poles into kerbside chargers, which is the same logic applied to street furniture.
Europe has been running that idea at scale for years. ubitricity passed 7,000 public charge points in the UK by 2023 by converting lampposts, and installed 500 in the London borough of Bexley alone.
Britain has also tried the harder version. Trojan Energy’s connectors sit flush in the pavement and rise only when someone plugs in, trialled across Brent and Camden.
The size of the European problem is a housing statistic. Eurostat found 46% of the EU population living in flats, which is roughly the share for whom a driveway will never be the answer.
Europe’s other move was legal rather than physical. The revised energy performance of buildings directive gives residents what campaigners call a right to plug.
Article 14(8) is the relevant clause. Member states must streamline and accelerate installation for tenants and owners, and may allow a refusal only on serious and legitimate grounds, with the deadline for writing it into national law falling this May.
Campaigners think it is thin. Transport and Environment points out that the directive never defines what those grounds are, and sets no binding requirement to pre-equip existing apartment blocks.
The 70% saving is Voltpost’s own number. No independent test has been published, and somebody still has to decide to buy the things, which is the part no mounting bracket fixes.
Walmart went from zero to 100 charging stations in under two years because a retailer chose to pay for it. Europe wrote a right into a directive instead, and nobody has yet had to say what it means.
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