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  • EVclicks races past 4,000 image milestone

    The premise behind EVclicks is simple - people from all around the world donate their electric vehicle images for anyone to download and use in aid of the transition to zero tailpipe emission transport. Since it was founded in February 2018, the number of galleries and types of vehicles - and chargers - has grown exponentially. We recently raced past the 4,000 image milestone, and have dozens of galleries of every imaginable sort of electric vehicle - from everyday electric cars and taxis, to electric vans, buses, bikes and EV conversions. We have electric boats and ships, racing cars and one wheel e-skateboards. And we have an amazing 24 galleries dedicated to Chinese electric car manufacturers. Let's not forget the charging galleries. From public charging to workplace and home charging, there are images from around the globe. Images from EVclicks have been used by numerous people, organisations, trade bodies, media outlets (BBC News was a highlight), and Government. And so a huge 'thank you!' goes to everyone who has donated photos over the last four and a half years. I also need to thank The Plugseeker, who has volunteered countless hours of his time to support EVclicks and get it to where it is today. If you haven't checked out the website yet, please do! And if you would like to donate your EV-related photos, simply email the originals to evclicks@gmail.com Gill Nowell, 10 July 2022 You can find me on Twitter @Gill_Nowell, and find The Plugseeker @The_PlugSeeker.

  • New Chinese EVclicks Galleries

    Ever heard of the this car? No? This is the HiPhi X . It has a 97kWh battery, 2x 220kW motors, 820nM torque & 0-62mph of 3.9 secs... This is just one example of the multitudes of amazing EVs that are currently only available in China. There are a wealth of brilliant EVs in China that many of us have probably never even heard of. EV Clicks has therefore now teamed up with Fully Charged Show's China presenter - Elliott Richards. With his help we have now opened a brand new set of galleries to showcase these interesting EVs. We hope going forward to see alot more photo donations from other viewers in China to help us expand further. Let's hope we see some of these fantastic cars appearing in Europe in the near future

  • EVclicks achieves major milestone!

    We are delighted to announce that image donations to EVclicks have flown past the 2,000 milestone. Huge thanks go to everyone from around the globe who have donated their EV photos in aid of the transition to zero tailpipe emission transport. Founded in February 2019 by EV enthusiast and advocate Gill Nowell, EVclicks has gone from strength to strength, as both image donations and use of the images continue to increase. It was set up with the aim of making EV images freely available for use by schools, communities, projects and businesses in support of the move away from the internal combustion engine, to electric modes of transport. Although impossible to track all uses of the photos, examples can be seen in marketing materials for trade bodies, use by Government in EV schools campaigns, by EV YouTubers, in presentations on climate change and EVs, and by the newly formed Electric Vehicle Association (EVA) England (in the spirit of transparency, Gill is a founding member of EVA England). EVclicks has benefited recently from the support the online EV advocate commonly known as ”The Plugseeker”, who has been amazing in encouraging more and more people to contribute their photos to the website, and has been instrumental in setting up a FaceBook group and Instagram account for EVclicks. We now have a far more organised library of images, and hope to add a search function soon. As far as we know, there is no other free resource of EV images. EVclicks is a success thanks to everyone who donates their photos - please keep them coming!

  • The art of smart with Ohme

    It’s no secret that I’m passionate about electric vehicles. Turns out that I can now add electric vehicle charging equipment to the list. How I discovered the world of electric vehicles I’ve been lucky enough to have worked with electric cars since 2012, when I embarked on an expression of interest document that became the My Electric Avenue project. My Electric Avenue was the first project in the UK, if not the world, to look at the impact of clusters of electric cars charging on local electricity networks. It was also the first project of its kind to trial a demand management charging solution (we’d call it a ‘smart charger’ these days) to manage the impact when a few electric cars are charging across the tea-time peak, and to understand how customers might accept having their charging remotely managed. Thanks to My Electric Avenue, I had my first drive in an electric car – an early version of the Nissan LEAF. I loved it. Such an easy, smooth ride, and speedy too, thanks to the 100% torque. During my time setting up the clusters of electric car drivers for that project, I witnessed innumerable ‘EV smiles’ from other first-time electric car drivers. There was even a man in the New Forest who swore that driving a Nissan LEAF was ‘better than driving an Aston Martin DB7’. Although he did caveat this statement by saying that the LEAF didn’t beat the DB7 on aesthetics. Fast forward to the fast lane Fast forward through a number of electric vehicle events such as Cenex LCV, where I was lucky enough to drive many of the makes and models of electric car available on the market today – from the Tesla Model X to the BMW i8, the Hyundai KONA to the Renault Zoe. And many more. But what was I driving at home on an almost daily basis? Would you believe it, and much to my chagrin, a dirty diesel SAAB 93. However, like many would-be electric car drivers I suspect, I simply couldn’t justify spending out for a new (or second-hand car) when I had a paid for car that was in good working order. Ditching the diesel And then disaster with a silver lining struck. The SAAB was written off the week before Christmas, 2018, typically as I was out and about at meetings with my CEO from ElectraLink. With no-one hurt, I was nevertheless left car-less, with two young children to ferry about, and relatives to visit. I tweeted for support – whom should I speak with to find a second-hand electric car? The EV community came into its own, and thanks to Matt Cleevely of Cleevely EV, and Lewis Black from E-Cars Trading, my very own second hand 30kWh Nissan LEAF with a 6.6kW onboard charger, was hand delivered to my doorstep, on the Sunday just after Christmas. I won’t go into the detail of the excitement levels of both myself and my children, but you can imagine… All good things come in Ohme-shaped packages I need to rewind to the day after the write-off. I’d mentioned to my former colleague, Daniel Hollingworth, that I was planning on getting myself an electric car. As luck would have it, Dan had recently started working for a start-up company called Ohme. And as even better luck would have it, he was looking for people to beta test Ohme’s new intelligent charging cable, where the smart functionality happens in the cable, rather than in a box on the wall. I leapt at the chance of being a beta tester. Ohme arranged for an electrician to fit a 32A commando socket to the outside of my house. This enables my Nissan LEAF to charge at 7kW, which is a pretty decent rate for at-home charging, adding about 25 miles of range per hour. One of the many benefits of Ohme is that they make cable versions that can be used with existing charge points or you can get a separate socket installed – so it’s ostensibly easier and cheaper to get it up and running. Or charging. In charge control I use the Ohme app to schedule my charging, so that my car is 80% charged by 7am every weekday, and 100% charged by 7am at weekends. I can override this schedule at any time and opt for ‘max charging’ if I need a boost unexpectedly. It then reverts to the original charging schedule when I next plug in. I can also choose to charge my car when it’s cheapest, or greenest (so when most renewables are on the system), or to optimise battery life. I don’t consider that there’s going to be any issue with my LEAF’s battery (Nissan extended the warranty on the battery from five to eight years way back in 2012/3), however as I own rather than lease the car, I’m inclined not to charge it to full every single day. Ohme is really receptive of feedback and have taken some of my observations on the app into account, mainly around ease of use and ensuring that it’s not too technical for the non-technically minded among us. Just plug and switch (to Octopus)... I plug in every evening, regardless of my state of charge. I leave the rest to Ohme. I’ve switched energy supplier to Octopus, as I know I’m getting the best deal when it comes to Ohme working in harmony with the Octopus ‘Go’ tariff. Once I have a SMETS2 smart meter installed through Octopus, I’ll look at switching to the Agile tariff to optimise my charging even further. What I do know, is that when it’s particularly windy, I can check my Ohme app and it tells me that I can charge for 2p per electric mile. That definitely puts a smile on my face. I’m cheap and I’m green. Twitter: @Gill_Nowell and @EVclicks

  • Fully Charged LOVE 2019!

    Fully Charged LIVE has one more day to go... I was lucky enough to be there on days one and two. As I left Silverstone yesterday afternoon, courtesy of the fabulous Martyn Lee of @EVNewsDaily podcast fame, my overriding feeling was one of having been swamped by kindness over the course of the show. Hence the 'LOVE'. The LOVE started before even reaching the venue. 200 electric car drivers gave their time freely to ferry delegates from the car park to the venue. For many, this will have been their first ride in an electric car. What a perfect start to the Fully Charged experience. Kudos to the @TeslaOwnersUK and the other EV drivers who made this happen. Big shout out to Francesca from the Fully Charged team who went waaay out of her way to help me on arrival. Suffice to say, she helped me out of a tight spot with my bag and a VIP pass. The atmosphere of the show was electric from the start. Excellent business to business networking on day one, thanks to the VIP 500 initiative, thanks to the REA. The best part for me was to put faces to Twitter names. It was amazing to meet @fi_saunders, @pluginadventure, @KateFantom, @The_PlugSeeker, @raimonick, @GarethEdwards86, and many more, in person. I'm so glad that you all actually do exist! A challenge to us all though... how do we break out of our bubble and spread the EV word further afield? I spoke briefly about this with Dan Caesar from Fully Charged. One thing's for sure. Fully Charged LIVE is a great start. A highlight of my Friday was representing ElectraLink in a live panel session on 'How's the UK doing on Energy & Transport?'. Hosted by Maddie Moate, fellow panellists and absolute experts, were Dave Greenwood from WMG, and Tom Callow from BP Chargemaster. Discussion ranged from data-driven support for EV uptake through projects such as the LCT Detection project, through to battery life and how people's attitudes in general are shifting towards a life of electric driving. And so to my next experience of kindness. A friend of a friend had mentioned to me that their seven year old severely autistic son had written to Maddie Moate a number of times. A response from her would mean the world to him. So, armed with a letter from seven year old Alex, my mission was to conjure up enough confidence to ask Maddie for at least a photograph of her with the letter, or an autograph. Maddie's reaction blew me away. Rather than do either of those things, Maddie asked if she could take the letter away with her, research the question, and write a full response to Alex. And she did just that. I collected a hand written letter from Maddie on the Saturday. This will make one little boy happier than we can imagine, no doubt. Bringing us back to the event itself, let's not forget the fantastic array of exhibitors and the electric cars themselves. It was great to catch up with DriveElectric and Cleevely EV. I was over the moon to meet my first Tesla Model 3, and curious to see a DeLorean converted to electric. Over 100 makes and models of EV have been at the show. Alas I didn't find time to test drive, but to be honest, I was happy to leave the test drives to the newcomers. I was thrilled to be invited to chat with Martyn Lee for his @EVNewsDaily podcast on the Saturday. We talked about ElectraLink's Energy Market Data Hub and how data is driving innovation in the energy sector; we spent time discussing EVclicks, with some great ideas for the online EV image library; I updated Martyn on my Ohme EV intelligent cable smart charging experience. And so it was time to leave in style with a lift from Martyn in his Renault Zoe. A perfect end to a brilliant two days at Fully Charged LIVE. Thank you to Robert Llewellyn, Dan Casear and all the team at Fully Charged for the best electric vehicle and cleantech show ever! I'm already looking forward to next year.

  • It's the final countdown to Fully Charged LIVE!

    As the highlight of the electric vehicle year fast approaches, I wonder in amazement at the prospect of 3,000 EV test drives, 30 live sessions, a live music stage, loads of fun things for children to do, hundreds of electric vehicle and cleantech exhibitors, and great networking amongst fellow enthusiasts and innovators. Fully Charged LIVE is taking place from 7 - 9 June at Silverstone. I am delighted to have been asked to take part in one of the live panel sessions. I'll be joining Tom Callow, from BP Chargemaster, and Dave Greenwood from WMG at 14.00 on Friday 7 June. Hosted by TV presenter Maddie Moate, we'll be talking about how the UK is doing on energy and transport. I've worked on EV-grid integration projects since 2012, am a Nissan LEAF driver, and a proud beta tester of the Ohme intelligent charging cable. I'm looking forward to chatting about my favourite subjects (electric cars and smart charging), and also consider how a data-driven approach to innovation can support EV uptake. I'll be representing ElectraLink on 7 June. ElectraLink delivers the UK's Energy Market Data Hub. We're doing amazing things with data to support the uptake of electric vehicles and other low carbon technologies - a good example is the LCT Detection project with IBM for Western Power Distribution, where we used a data-driven approach to spot previously unknown instances of EVs and solar panels connected to the local electricity network. Knowledge of what's connected to the network is critical for Distribution Network Operators so that they can plan effectively to facilitate uptake of EVs and solar on the local electricity network (which wasn't designed with big new loads such as electric cars in mind). Fully Charged LIVE promises to be the most exciting and exhilarating EV and cleantech event of the year. If you haven't yet bought your ticket, you can do so here: https://www.fullychargedshow.co.uk/fully-charged-live-2019

  • Ohme, oh my... a new way of smart charging has come to town!

    As a self-confessed electric vehicle devotee, I find myself now just as excitable about a new smart charger that I've been beta testing on the QT since February. Imagine my relief when the Ohme intelligent charging cable (smart charger) launched to the world on Friday, 29 March 2019. At last I can talk about it! The smart functionality all happens in the cable itself, meaning that it is fully portable, which differentiates it from other smart chargers on the market. Ohme has partnered with Octopus Energy, so that the Ohme app syncs with Agile Octopus, the UK's first dynamic time-of-use tariff. This means that I can opt to automatically charge my car when it's greenest to do so - or indeed when it is cheapest; or, I can choose to optimise my car's battery life through the app. The thing I love best about the Ohme smart charger is its ease of use. I schedule my car to charge to 80% on weekdays, and 100% at weekends. I simply plug in every time I get home, regardless of state of charge, and let Ohme work its magic. Or, as Daniel Hollingworth, UK Manager at Ohme, told EV News Daily, "Ohme wakes up and hoses the car down with energy." I also love that I charge for around just 2p per electric mile when it's windy. And I know that others who have been testing the Ohme intelligent cable have charged for just 1.4p per mile on a blustery night. That's pretty remarkable - and remarkably cheap. Benefits of the Ohme intelligent cable include: • Ohme can be used with any electric vehicle • It can be used with any existing charge socket, so doesn’t require an installer visit, and can be used on public charge points - not just at home • It can even be used with a standard UK 3-pin socket or an inexpensive commando socket (which can charge as fast as a typical home charger) • It manages EV drivers’ energy usage and sets charging preferences like daily commutes and weekend trips, and receives a summary of drivers’ cost per mile • It monitors users’ Green Score, calculating the C02 consumption per mile and comparing it with a diesel or petrol vehicle - allowing management of the environmental impact Something else to look forward to... the Ohme website is coming soon. I'll update this blog when it lands. Can't wait! p.s. The Ohme intelligent cable (smart charger) will cost £399, but the first 1,000 Octopus Energy customers get a special launch price of £199.

  • Pumped and stoked...

    We were indeed all pumped and stoked to be at the Fully Charged Live briefing session at Silverstone in the week. Hot off the aeroplane from Australia, Robert Llewellyn was joined by his co-presenter Jonny Smith, with the indomitable Dan Caesar and the rest of the Fully Charged team, to tell us about this summer's three day extravaganza, 7 - 9 June 2019. Better, bigger and even busier than last year's inaugural show, this year's event hints at 3,000 test drives, with every electric car available in the UK on site for browser, if not driver, appeal. And it's not just about electric cars. Clean tech is the name of the game, with exhibitors showing off the best in renewable and clean energy solutions, as well as plenty of fun and entertainment for all the family. If you haven't booked your tickets, here's where you can buy them: https://www.fullychargedshow.co.uk/fully-charged-live-2019 I'll be there on Friday 7 June, taking part in a live panel session hosted by Maddie Moate, representing ElectraLink. Hope to see you there!

  • 85,000 electric kilometres, 33 countries

    The electric road trip of a lifetime is coming to a close, as @WiebeWkkr nears the end of his fully charged journey from the Netherlands to Australia in his trusty Blue Bandit. As well as being a master of electric vehicle driving, Wiebe has also mastered the art of taking images with a drone. One of Wiebe's perhaps most striking photos adorns the home page of the @EVclicks website. Thank you, Wiebe, for donating your images to @EVclicks, and all the best for those final electric miles! (or kilometres)

  • Are you Fully Charged yet?

    This image was kindly donated to @EVclicks by Dan Caesar, or @FullyChargedDan as he is known in the Twitter-sphere. Dan works with the inimitable Robert Llewellyn, the driving force behind the Fully Charged Show. Which brings me on to a serious question - have you put the Fully Charged Live show in your diary yet? At time of writing, tickets are due to go on sale soon. Fully Charged Live, 7 - 9 June 2019 at Silverstone. It's set to be THE electric vehicle event of the decade.

  • Build it and they will come

    This image takes pride of place atop the @EVclicks Twitter page. I snapped it at Chester Zoo in January 2019, having managed to glide into the last of eight beautifully demarcated EV spaces. I happily plugged in my Nissan LEAF to the Pod Point charging unit. 'Build it and they will come'... not so long ago it was a challenge to spot even one electric car amidst the hundreds (thousands?!) parked at the zoo. Now we have eight electric cars merrily drinking electrons, ready for their zoo-satiated owners to return and silently drive away back home. #electricvehicles #EV #RoadtoZero #airquality #chesterzoo

  • The @EVclicks vision

    The vision behind @EVclicks is simple - it's an open source, free library of electric vehicle images for anyone to use in aid of the transition from #ICE to #EV. In my work life, I often need to source electric vehicle-related images for use in presentations and press releases. I like to use true to life images, that actually show how people are adapting to life with electric vehicles and their charging needs. It struck me that a platform on which to share electric vehicle images could be useful. With this in mind, I set up a new Twitter account, @EVclicks, and encouraged many of my fellow electric vehicle advocates to 'donate' their images for open access, free use. The response has been fantastic. I am hoping that schools, community groups, projects and small businesses (this list in non-exhaustive!) will make use of the photos as we make the inevitable move away from internal combustion engine, to electric modes of transport. #electricvehicles #EV #smartcharging #airquality #RoadtoZero

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