A pilot project will allow blue badge holders and taxi drivers to create pavement gullies next to their homes so they can charge their electric cars.
Brighton and Hove City Council cabinet backed the trial as part of a raft of measures to expand electric vehicle charging across the city.
During the cabinet meeting on Thursday 14 May, councillor Trevor Muten said the pilot would allow residents without a driveway to charge an electric vehicle from their home.
Priority will be given to blue badge holders using the Electric Vehicle Pavement Charging Grant. The council will work closely with Motability, which has a policy to transition its customers to electric vehicles (EVs).
There is £232,000 available from the Department for Transport through its EV Pavement Channel Grant to cover 193 gullies to run charging cables from homes to vehicles parked on the road.
The council also wants to encourage more taxi and private hire drivers to move towards electric vehicles.
The cabinet member for transport and city infrastructure said: “Brighton and Hove is not a city of driveways.
“Around two-thirds of households have no access to off-street parking, which means that without public charging, the transition to EVs simply would not be fair or practical.
“Many residents say they would like to transition to EV but feel living on a terrace, flat or home without a driveway is a prohibitive barrier to their environmental choice.
“We need to build infrastructure that removes this barrier and enables this choice.
“That is why this strategy focuses strongly on public, on-street and communal charging, that serve every community, not just rapid hubs.”
A report to the cabinet said this would not be suitable for all households but would be an alternative to public charging.
The report said more than half of the city’s households do not have off-street parking and would require public infrastructure to charge an electric vehicle.
There are 4,857 fully electric cars in the city, more than four per cent of all vehicles.
By 2040, electric vehicle ownership is projected to reach 82,000 vehicles.
There are currently 501 public charge points in the city with a further 1,650 to be installed in lamp posts in the next three years.
By 2040, the council aims to have 6,000 lamppost-based chargers installed across the city.
A further 1,000 fast charge points, 200 rapid chargers and at least two ultra-rapid charging hubs are also planned.
During the last year, the council has received more than 500 requests for charge points.
National Government policy is to ensure all new cars and vans sold are electric by 2035.
A public consultation carried out between June and August last year had 505 responses with more than half of the responders interested in using cross-pavement gullies.
Of those 70 per cent were willing to share charge points with others if the costs were shared.
Out of those responding, 471 had access to a vehicle – electric or otherwise – and 69 per cent of those had on-street parking only.
Three-quarters of the responders were willing to walk five minutes or less to access a charge point.
The biggest barrier to electric vehicle ownership was the lack of available home charging.
Seventy per cent of the responders said the cost of public charging, which is more than home charging, was “unfair”.
The council has secured £2.85 million to support further charging installations through the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) capital fund.
