On Saturday 27 Feb 2016, Simon Lonsdale of ChargePoint gave a very stimulating presentation on the current state of EVs, Charging, and Self-Driving Vehicles as well as a glimpse into what the near future has in store for us. This talk certainly interested the local network as over 20 people attended the seminar.

The talk started with a look at the number of EVs currently in the US and the approaches manufacturers are taking to encourage people to switch from gasoline; be it access to HOV lanes, the availability of charge points, or the price to fill up an electric tank.

Amongst engineers, safety and in particular electrical safety, was of great interest and sparked a lot of discussion amongst the attendees. This was particularly relevant when talking about the newer fast charging stations which will be capable of delivering 50KW of power to charge faster than ever before.

As ever, standards are an issue in the field with 3 differing approaches being touted; US, Japan, and Tesla. Work is ongoing to resolve these differences to make life easier for the consumer.
Finally, Simon described his experiences on a working group for the World Economic Forum where they discussed what the future may look like for cities if they were to adopt self-driving vehicles as an alternative to taxis.

The living conversation continued well beyond the scheduled hour and after the event the NorCal team received many requests to convey thanks to Simon and the organizers.


For those of you who missed the presentation, the slides have been posted on the IET NorCal website. Please note the presentation and its contents may only be used for personal non-commercial purposes.


If you are recording your activities in Career Manager as part of your CPD, the event was 2 hours long.