EV charger designed ‘for UK-wide rollout’ may never be made

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AE-NMidlands
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EV charger designed ‘for UK-wide rollout’ may never be made

#1

Post by AE-NMidlands »

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... er-be-made
It was meant to join the red phone box, the London bus and the black cab as a symbol of modern Britain. Yet a so-called iconic design for a UK electric car charger commissioned by Grant Shapps, then transport minister, is likely to remain on the drawing board after the government admitted it may never be made.
The government put out the tender for the contract in June last year and revealed the winning design, by the Royal College of Art and PA Consulting, at the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow a few months later.

Shapps, who is now business secretary, said the bollard-like design, which featured the royal coat of arms and a round, light-up handle, would be “rolled out across the country”,would “stand the test of time” and be “as iconic and recognisable as the British phone box, London bus or black cab”.
more froth with nothing delivered... You do have to wonder whether their agenda is just to waste UK companies' money with all sorts of spurious "challenges" with no royalties or profit likely - ever.
A
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Oldgreybeard
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Re: EV charger designed ‘for UK-wide rollout’ may never be made

#2

Post by Oldgreybeard »

Years ago I had a boss who was keen on these "grand gestures". He decided we would run a DARPA-like competition, for new autonomous vehicles to be used as aids to counter terrorism. I was supposed to be doing the grunt work for this, and when he gave me the outline of what he was planning I sent it back with links to the current state of off-the-shelf drones and open source projects like Ardupilot. He was shocked that anyone could buy all the parts needed to make a UAV off-the-shelf, but not convinced that his "grand challenge" wasn't worth doing. Needless to say we wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds doing completely pointless stuff just to keep him happy . . .
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Mr Gus
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Re: EV charger designed ‘for UK-wide rollout’ may never be made

#3

Post by Mr Gus »

Bearing in mind how "samey" many public chargers are I cannot see how the "winning design" stands out, nor would have become iconic (blah blah) unless painted red in cast iron with crown type embellishments.

The winning design looks very much like the ones that failed time & again at Morrisons & were scrapped because of rain ingress, naff software & parts failing within 6 weeks of repair, ...not a good start surely to copy a pre-existing design so closely.

Likely didnt help by being talked up by the princely ponce of wiff-waff.
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smegal
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Re: EV charger designed ‘for UK-wide rollout’ may never be made

#4

Post by smegal »

It looks like a bloody pod point.

They could have at least made it look like a post box!
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