00:00 Hi, I'm Toddington Harper and I'm the founder and CEO of GridServe.
00:04 It's incredibly exciting.
00:14 This is a project that's been in the works for many years.
00:20 It's incredibly exciting, the collaboration between GridServe and London Gatwick.
00:26 We've taken an idea into a design, got planning permission for that design in collaboration with the airport.
00:33 We put a brand new grid connection in.
00:35 We've now built an incredibly exciting facility.
00:37 This is the most advanced electric vehicle charging facility at any airport in the world.
00:42 It's the first electric forecourt at any airport in the world.
00:46 It's designed to be able to provide visitors to London Gatwick Airport
00:53 complete confidence to come here in electric vehicles.
00:56 It's also designed to support people who are staff, for example, working in the area
01:00 to give them the confidence to transition to electric vehicles.
01:03 It's designed for residents.
01:04 It's very accessible from the motorway.
01:07 Just a few minutes off the airport on the south terminal to be able to charge incredibly easily.
01:16 It's now meant that if you happen to be in the London Gatwick Airport area for any reason,
01:25 visiting the airport or not, you now can charge any type of electric vehicle without any concern at all
01:32 with a much better experience than you would get at using a petrol station.
01:35 In addition to the 30 chargers here, most of them high-power chargers up to 350 kilowatts,
01:42 so capable of providing 100 miles of charge in five minutes,
01:46 although in practice most vehicles today, the fastest vehicles today, will take about 10 minutes.
01:53 In addition to all of the charging, we also have a Costa coffee, so people can get a great coffee.
01:59 We've got a Little Fresh, a supermarket powered by Amazon Just Walk Out technology.
02:07 [Music]
02:14 Which is fantastic.
02:15 So you walk up, you swipe a contactless card, you walk in, you pick up what you want,
02:19 you walk out and you get billed automatically.
02:22 There's fantastic high-speed internet as well.
02:25 There's lounge facilities.
02:27 There's meeting room facilities.
02:29 And all of it is also powered by net zero carbon energy,
02:34 because in addition to providing charging for electric vehicles,
02:38 we also produce clean energy from solar projects as well.
02:41 Getting to net zero is incredibly important,
02:55 and the urgency of the speed that we get there is critical.
02:59 So the UK has signed up to getting to net zero by 2050,
03:04 but the reality is getting to net zero by 2050 doesn't really align with the needs,
03:09 the science of climate change.
03:11 We need to get there as quickly as we possibly can.
03:13 And so by building infrastructure like this,
03:16 it means people can get to transition to electric cars today.
03:21 Not until 2050, they can do it today.
03:24 And they know when they turn up at a grid-serve charging station,
03:27 whether it's at London Gatwick Airport or it's across 80% of the motorway network,
03:33 that when you plug in to a grid-serve charger,
03:36 your vehicle is being charged by net zero energy.
03:39 And what that means is that every kilowatt hour of electricity that goes into a car
03:45 is netted off by a zero carbon kilowatt hour of electricity that we are producing,
03:50 either directly by grid-serve at our own solar farms,
03:53 or if we've got excess needs, which we often do,
03:56 we'll be buying renewable energy from other different renewable energy projects.
03:59 And so people know that they can transition today.
04:02 You have a better experience than petrol and diesel.
04:05 You can be powered by renewable energy.
04:07 You've got great facilities that you wouldn't get at petrol stations.
04:12 And there's no need to wait.
04:14 So what we're hoping to do by projects like this as well
04:16 is that not just give people the confidence of people who already have electric vehicles,
04:20 but really the incentive and the excitement around people in the vicinity
04:25 being able to transition to electric cars as quickly as possible.
04:28 So we've been having some great conversations also today about opportunities.
04:37 So building this infrastructure here means we now have got a great grid connection.
04:41 We've got a fantastic base, and it's how do we build on that.
04:46 So it's how do we work with the airport and businesses and individuals
04:51 using the airport to help assist the uptake of electric vehicles,
04:55 and actually different types of electric vehicles as well,
04:58 in the earliest possible timeframes.
05:00 So there's this huge opportunity.
05:02 We've built the infrastructure.
05:04 We've got opportunities for people to come around and do test drives,
05:06 learn about electric cars.
05:08 We've got as much power as is needed to charge as many vehicles as we possibly can.
05:12 So it's now how do we collaborate and increase the uptake of electric vehicles of all types,
05:17 and how do we work closer and closer with the airport
05:20 to really help assist this transition as quickly as we can.
05:26 [ Silence ]
Comments