ZipCharge, a start-up working on portable EV charging, has won the British Engineering Excellence Award. The award for the R&D Project of the Year was given in recognition of ZipCharge’s R&D programme and putting the portable electric vehicle charger through meticulous automotive industry car development processes and standard trials to ensure it is ready for market by early-2023.

The company's Go portable EV charger is now in validation prototype (VP) stage with designs released for manufacture and hardware testing well underway.

Richie Sibal, co-founder, ZipCharge said, “We have implemented exhaustive automotive industry testing standards to the unit, the electronics and the software. We’re highly confident it will work perfectly wherever they park their EVs”.

Jonathan Carrier, co-founder, ZipCharge said “UK is globally recognised as engineering some of the best EVs in the world, from the Nissan Leaf to the LEVC Taxi. Now our EV charging products are engineered to the same exacting quality”.

Philippa Oldham, chairperson of the Awards and stakeholder engagement director at the Advanced Propulsion Centre said: “ The value and use case for a portable EV charger is evident, with the potential to break down barriers to EV ownership and I look forward to seeing this product come to market.”

The British Engineering Excellence Awards have been running since 2009 to recognise design and innovation within the UK. Since then, the BEEAs have grown in size and stature with both large and small businesses competing for the prestigious prizes, competing on a level playing field, judged solely on the quality of their engineering.

ZipCharge says its portable charger removes a common barrier to EV ownership – by bringing the possibility of home charging to anyone who can’t currently plug-in at their house. As per the company estimates in the UK alone, 8.5 million or 40 percent of car-owning households are without designated or off-street parking. Elsewhere, this figure reaches 60 percent for example in Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea and in major cities in the USA, China and India.