A N EAGLESCLIFFE manufacturer has received EU funding to break new ground in the Electric Vehicles (EV) charger market .

Carroll & Meynell Transformers, of Durham Lane Industrial Park, was the only North-East company to successfully access funding from the Horizon 2020 programme.

The initial grant of €50,000 will support a feasibility study and develop a prototype of a “Multicharger” for electric vehicles which will be capable of charging different brands of vehicles simultaneously.

A recent report said the European EV market will need close to 2 million charging points by 2017 and another estimated it would require 4.1 million by 2020.

Current charging stations only allow one vehicle to be plugged in at any one time and Peter McGurr, company commercial manager, said there was currently no guarantee of a suitable charging point being available.

"Whilst some manufacturers offer “multi-vehicle” charge points, all models investigated were found to be cosmetic combinations of plural charging points, only one vehicle can be charged at a time," he said, "No instances were found where you could charge for example a Tesla, a Toyota and a Nissan simultaneously.

“This situation is similar to that experienced by mobile phone users when trying to borrow someone else’s charger. Our product will be capable of providing re-charge simultaneously to multiple vehicles of potentially different designs and with different charging requirements.”

The company, which employs 120 people, has been operating for more than 40 years and is still run by managing director Mike Meynell. He said: “We are immensely proud to have received this grant. From more than 2,600 applications across Europe, only 185 bids have been successful, and we are the only one in the North East. This is an exciting development for Carroll & Meynell and the support from Horizon 2020 will be instrumental in driving our future growth.”

Carroll & Meynell Transformers recently hosted a visit by Chancellor George Osborne. It is a major designer and manufacturer of transformers to the construction, engineering, transport/traction, mining, and electrical wholesale sectors, and is currently supplying projects in Chicago, Toronto and Kuala Lumpur.

It is a principal supplier of specialist transformers to one of the world’s largest manufacturers of marine Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV’s), which are required to be ultra-reliable in the harshest of environments, and is also well-known for its signalling transformers for the rail industry.