EARLY adopters of electric vehicles are to be offered subsidised charging points in their homes in exchange for providing vital data on their use.

Development agency One North East will provide 55 domestic charging units for homes in the region, as the North-East continues to position itself as a hub for electric vehicle expertise and research.

The 7kw units will initially be installed at the homes of people involved in the region’s Switch EV trial, which will make 35 passenger vehicles available to individuals and businesses across the region.

Among the fleet are the first Nissan Leaf cars to hit the roads in the UK and the Smith Electric Vehicles Edison minibus and LTI taxi.

After that, One North East plans to offer them to motorists buying the vehicles, with a range of electric cars coming onto the market this year.

Funding for the chargers is coming from the Governmentbacked Plugged-in Places scheme, which will see about 1,300 charging points installed across the region, mostly in public areas.

Dr Colin Herron, manufacturing and productivity manager at One North East, said: “Where we subsidise these it will be on the condition we have access to the data.

“We need to know how often people are charging, the average price they are paying for electricity and the times of day they are using it.

“We need this information for the bigger picture with the National Grid.

“It is also another reason for people in the region to look into buying an electric car.

“Most people believe that domestic charging is going to be the means by which most people charge their car, but we won’t know for sure unless they are used in real-world trials.”

The first three charging points have been installed in the homes of workers at Nissan, in Sunderland, using the Leaf, which will be produced at the plant from 2013, as part of the Switch EV project.

Ian Black, production director at the Sunderland plant, who is trialling a Leaf, said: “It only takes five seconds to plug the car in at night and five to unplug it in the morning, fully charged and ready for the next day’s driving.”

A further charging point has been installed at Gateshead College’s Team Valley campus for apprentices to train on.

Dr Herron said: “We need to make sure the next generation of electricians understand these things and how to wire them into a house.”

The chargers have been developed by London-based POD Point, while RWE npower has been appointed to install the equipment throughout this year and next.

The electric vehicle industry has the potential to create thousands of North-East jobs.

As well as awarding Leaf production to its North-East plant, Nissan last year started construction of its advanced electric car battery manufacturing plant in Sunderland.

The region is also the UK’s low-carbon economic area for vehicles and is building an £8.4m national Skills Academy for Sustainable Manufacturing, next to Sunderland’s plant.