Making more of your parking: The shift from parking to charging bays

When most people look at a parking space, they will simply see a place to leave a car. However, as technology changes and user requirements shift, parking spaces can be capable of so much more. Not all spaces should be viewed the same, general parking spaces and dedicated bays for EV have different uses, and need approaching in distinct ways.

It’s important for businesses to make the most of their facilities, capitalising on every opportunity they can to improve and offer new services to their visitors. For this to work, parking needs to be thought of differently.

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Understand the changes you need to make

Making changes to your parking spaces shouldn’t be done at random. Choosing to add additional services to your car park needs careful consideration to guarantee they not only meet the needs of your visitors but also have a positive impact on your site.

Data and ANPR insight allow you to see how your car park is being used. In terms of transforming your approach to parking spaces specifically, the information that’s going to be the most useful is your Fuel Analysis Data.

Using ANPR and DVLA information it’s possible to get a clear picture of the types of vehicles using your car park, whether that’s petrol, diesel, hybrid of fully electric.

You might be surprised by the number of electric vehicles using your car park, or you might see a steady rise in that number as more people make the switch to EV.

Powering change on your car park

The changes you make to your car park can be incredibly varied, but the biggest one to make is adapting how vehicles interact with specific spaces.

EV charging transforms a space from simply somewhere to park to somewhere with additional convenience and revenue generation potential. Adding charging stations to a car park is one of the major steps forward that sites need to make to embrace the changing needs of drivers in the UK.

A traditional parking space provides nothing more than a place to leave a car and depending on the site might help generate paid parking revenue. A charging bay provides somewhere to leave a car, the revenue from charging, an EV infrastructure, and a service which specific (and growing) groups of people will rely on, meaning they return to your site over others.

That can make a dramatic difference to how your car park is used, how often and how much revenue it generates.

Protecting important spaces

Those spaces are invaluable to drivers using an EV. Which is why they need to be protected. Drivers misusing those spaces, either by leaving a non-electric car in them, overstaying, or not using them to charge their car are inconveniencing your other visitors, restricting access to services, and costing you money.

Our Evology chargers house an ANPR camera in the charging unit. This helps to monitor the bay, making sure that the vehicles using it are supposed to be there.

Protecting the important spaces on your car park doesn’t mean focusing on just your charging spaces. There are other priority bays on a car park, like accessible parking and parent and child spaces.

These spaces are just as important and improve the levels of accessibility and convenience on your site. Bay Enforcement helps to protect these bays, utilising a monitoring bollard an ANPR camera can be placed at each space to make sure they are only used by the appropriate visitors and acts as a strong visual deterrent for other people looking to abuse your parking.

Making the most of your bays

The way your car park is used will change over time, especially as the needs of the people using it adapt to new ways of driving, or their requirements change, such as needing a parent and child space.

Looking at how your spaces and their user requirements change over time and taking the time to not only embrace those changes but protect those spaces to improve their availability is crucial to the ongoing success of your car park.

The same technology that protects our Evology Chargers can be applied to any dedicated space on a car park. Our patented Bay Management solution allows you to improve the accessibility for any crucial space on your car park or enhance your existing EV infrastructure by adding our monitoring bollard to a space.

At Parkingeye we understand how important accessibility on a car park is. We can work with you to identify how many spaces you need to embrace EV, the level of protection your site needs and put the means in place to protect your car park.

To find out more about how we can help your business embrace EV and protect your priority spaces get in touch using the form.