Here is the result in plain text:
“BT has abandoned its scheme to turn green street cabinets into electric vehicle (EV) charging points having completed only one of the 60,000 conversions it initially said it was aiming for.
The scheme was announced in April 2024, with BT saying repurposing the cabinets was a “unique opportunity” to address a “key barrier” to people switching away from petrol and diesel cars.
However, the scheme has now been scrapped, with the firm saying it will be focusing on “the Wi-Fi connectivity challenge surrounding EV’s” instead.
A woman plugs her electric car into the public charging point on the street in a housing estate.
It’s disappointing that it’s not going to proceed,” Stuart Masson from automotive website The Car Expert told BBC News.
The good news that we are seeing in the industry is that the overall rollout of electric charging points is accelerating faster than had been predicted a couple of years ago, he added.
However, he said that most of the charging points are in busier areas rather than on streets nearer to people’s homes, meaning BT’s decision was still a setback.
The pilot scheme’s only charger will close in February.
Many green cabinets are coming towards the end of their lifespans as BT upgrades to fibre broadband.
But only one of them, in East Lothian, was ever actually turned into a public charging point.
It will now close in February, according to The Fast Charge newsletter, which broke the story.
A BT Group spokesperson said the trial tested a great deal about the challenges that many on-street EV drivers are facing with charging and where BT Group can add most value to the UK EV ecosystem.
The government has set a target of 300,000 public charging points by 2030.
Its own statistics show there are 73,334 public charging devices in the UK – a 37% increase on a year ago.
Nearly a third of these are in Greater London, according to EV charging company Zapmap.
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