Research conducted by Siemens found that over a third of British motorists are planning to buy into an electric future by purchasing a hybrid or full electric vehicle as their next car, with 40 percent saying that they would have jumped in sooner if the charging infrastructure was better.

In London, drivers believe that only 100 to 200 charging points are available in total, and many think that it's just not possible to juice up an AV at home or at work. Berlin-based Ubitricity has been converting streetlamps to charging points in the UK's capital since 2015, and together with project partner Siemens now have some 1,300 installations dotted throughout the city.

The technology is installed in existing streetlamp columns, and uses already-available infrastructure, so there's no digging up roads to lay new cables. Electric vehicle users plug a SmartCable into the streetlamp column and the other end is connected to the vehicle, allowing battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles to charge overnight outside residences that don't have driveways or garages. An in-cable meter box registers how many kilowatt-hours are used and the customer is billed accordingly.