Bridgestone is recharging its batteries after an enlightening insight into electric vehicle mobility and infrastructure, after successfully covering 1,200 miles across the UK and Ireland at the EV Rally.
Encompassing all five capital cities across the UK and Ireland with 25 stop-off points between 3 and 7 July, Bridgestone was able to navigate the route seamlessly with more than 50 other vehicles, in a first-hand appreciation of improving EV infrastructure.
Both the new Bridgestone Turanza 6 and Duravis Van tyres were ready-made products for this spotlight on electric vehicles, with both being ‘EV Ready’ tyres, making them the perfect choice for the rally.
Bridgestone Mobility Solutions’ telematics business Webfleet fitted on-board devices in the 23 vehicles tracked during the rally. They revealed that 4.87 tonnes of carbon were estimated to have been avoided, while 6,797kWh was utilised and 27,495 miles were covered with zero emissions. These figures were taken from a mixture of electric cars and vans.
The Volkswagen ID.4 took the team from Bridgestone from stop-to-stop, equipped with newly developed modular electric drive matrix and a fast-charging battery system consisting of different numbers of modules, depending on the desired range.
Bridgestone embarked on the EV Rally following the results of a survey they commissioned earlier this year with 2,000 drivers, which revealed that 40% would buy an EV by 2028, up 11% from when asked in 2022 (29%).
However, 67% raised fears about the availability of charging stations, up 1% on 2022, with exactly half of all respondents1 continuing to have range anxiety, which represented an increase of 21% from last year2.
Through its EV Rally experience, Bridgestone believes that these concerns are already being addressed in UK and Ireland and will ease rapidly further in future, owing to improving infrastructure and the focus of a range of businesses in this area, many who had participating teams in the EV Rally.