STARTUP LAB – Ep. 7: The Charging Point
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If you are keeping up with your car industry reading, you have probably run into the acronym “EV” and snippets about things like the Nissan Leaf or Tesla Motors. Yes, the electric car is back – and trying to stick. Consequently, there is a plethora of information out there on EVs. How can the typical combustion engine user make sense of it? Is there a one-stop shop to educate yourself on the subject? Luckily, there is. We spoke to Will Dron, Managing Editor of TheChargingPoint.com :
Will Dron, TheChargingPoint.com
What exactly is the Charging Point?
TheChargingPoint.com is the best online destination for all the latest electric vehicle news, reviews and comment. We’re witnessing a revolution in the transport industry right now, with all manufacturers adding more and more electric vehicles to their fleets, and TheChargingPoint.com has been created to help cut through the jargon and misinformation and give honest, practical advice to the consumer about these exciting new cars.
The back story: How did the Charging Point get started?
The site is the brainchild of Andrew Hirsch, chief executive of John Brown, the UK’s largest customer publishing agency. Andrew owns a REVA G-Wiz (known as the REVAi outside the UK), which is a funny little electric vehicle that has been very popular in London. He likes it but it’s not really a car – it’s classified as a “quadricycle” and doesn’t need to be particularly fast or safe – and Andrew was looking to upgrade. There are a whole load of electric cars coming out over the next couple of years – but he couldn’t find a specialist website that had a decent buying guide and independent reviews. He realised that there would be a rapidly growing number of people in the same boat as him, so why not get in there now and create our own EV site?
We feel if we’d have started the site a year ago it would have been too early, and if we’d got round to it a year from now we’d have missed the boat. 2011 is the key year for electric cars, with the launch of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV in Europe (will be simply the ‘i’ when it launches in the US market next year) and especially the Nissan LEAF and Chevrolet Volt, so we got in there just at the right time.
Interesting article - in an ideal world I'd love to drive an EV but they're out of my price range for now. Hopefully the site will be able to advise me when the prices start dropping!
Really interesting. A specialist electric car website is a sign of the times and quite a risky proposition at this stage in the game, while there are still many who doubt their long-term credibility. It sounds like it could just pay off, though. Good luck to them!
i'm a firm believer that soon enough there will be a time where carbon guzzling vehicles no longer exist. The Charging Point are forward-thinking enough to hop on the band wagon first, because soon it will be the only type of car magazine that need be!
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