Ruby and Yousaf live in Littlemore in a house with no driveway or off-street parking.

At the end of 2016 they purchased their first ‘Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle’ (ULEV)- a plug-in hybrid Mitsubishi Outlander.

Choosing a plug-in car

For Ruby and Yousaf the main reasons for switching to ‘ultra low emissions’ were both financial and environmental. “We can drive 32 miles on the battery, which means we can do our local trips around Oxford on electric so it’s much cheaper to run. We also travel to London regularly and don’t have to pay the congestion charge.”

Ruby and Yousaf are also happy about the environmental benefits of running a plug-in hybrid car; “it means we can drive with lower emissions”

The on-street charging challenge

But without a place to park off the street, charging the car comes with its own problems;

“The biggest problem that we have is that we don’t have a driveway, …I found that there are some other charge points where you can pay to charge, but you can only drive 32 miles on a full charge, and the charger is quite far away to drive there and back home, it uses up quite a lot of the electricity, so it’s a waste of my time as well.”

Ruby and Yousaf are relying on a neighbour temporarily letting them park the car on their driveway to charge up – but this can only happen at certain times and the couple have to plan their charging around daylight hours; “We’ve had to run a power cable half way across the street, and we’ve had to time it so that it’s safe for us to leave the window open for the cable, and it’s not too busy in the area to affect other people.”

How are we helping?

Yousaf found out about the Go Ultra Low Oxford project after searching online - now the couple hope that a charging point installed near them can help make charging their plug-in car easier:

“It’s great news for me that the council is running this project and can help me…it’s going to motivate more people to buy plug-in cars”

Go Ultra Low Oxford plans to install a new charger on their street this summer - which will be used by Ruby and Yousaf, and one of their neighbours to charge their new plug-in cars. The charger will also be available for use by the public – see our chargers page to find out where you can charge your plug-in car in Oxford.