Sebastian Stein's New Things Fund Blog

13 October 2023

Professor Sebastian Stein

The New Things Fund is a great opportunity to start a new project that has potential policy impact.

In 2022, my colleague Dr Elnaz Shafipour and myself were awarded this fund to explore the challenges that electric vehicle drivers are facing on long journeys, and how artificial intelligence technologies might help. The funding supported a large-scale survey of over 1,200 electric vehicle drivers in the UK, through which we established that over a third of drivers were unhappy with their experience.

Throughout the project, we were closely supported by the Public Policy | Southampton team. They helped us publish a policy brief on our findings, including recommendations on how digital tools and the use of artificial intelligence might mitigate some of the challenges we identified. They also supported us in organising a high-profile workshop at the Royal Society in London, where we discussed our policy brief with relevant stakeholders, including senior members of the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles as well as industry leaders.

The discussions and new connections that were enabled by the New Things Fund directly led to Elnaz and myself pursuing further work on using artificial intelligence to make charging easier for electric vehicle owners. We joined the Future Worlds Cohort 2023 and have received additional support through the Innovate UK Global Business Innovation Programme. We also built a prototype app, evtonomy, that helps drivers plan long journeys, and we have been awarded funding through the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account to develop this app further. Several of the attendees from the London workshop are now involved as mentors and future users of our work.

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