Clean-tech innovator Allye Energy has launched the Allye MEV (MAX for EV), the world’s first dedicated EV charger with built-in battery storage made from whole repurposed electric vehicle packs. MEV charges itself from any supply a depot already has and releases that energy fast, delivering up to 400kW to two vehicles at once, even from a 16A connection, without the grid upgrade that typically holds up fleet electrification. Engineered and built in the UK with batteries from UK-registered vehicles and 95% British-sourced components, MEV shows how clean-tech manufacturing can be delivered in the UK. The range starts at £70,000, with deliveries expected Q2 2027, in time for Round 2 of the UK government’s Depot Charging Scheme.
Short of power, not energy
Grid capacity is the biggest single barrier to fleet electrification, named by 47% of delegates polled at this year’s Fleet Electrification Forum. A new depot connection takes 18 to 36 months, according to the freight infrastructure body TwentyForty, and the UK government says some businesses wait up to 15 years, with the connection queue up tenfold in five years. Public charging is hit too: one of the UK’s largest charge point operators told MPs that around a third of the chargers it delivered in 2025 waited for power beyond their planned energisation date. Yet most depots are not short of energy, as vehicles stand for hours between shifts. They are short of the power to deliver it quickly.
The Depot Charging Scheme is designed to close that gap, and Allye has already delivered within it. In the scheme’s pre-phase, Allye and partner Chargepoly brought battery-buffered charging to J&M Murdoch’s refuse depot in Glasgow, where a grid upgrade had been quoted at £300,000. Within a single day, a MAX300 was buffering the existing 32A (22kW) supply; it now powers a satellite DC fast charger supporting two electric vehicles and supplying around 200kWh a day. MEV turns that approach into a dedicated, fixed charger.
How MEV works
MEV launches in two variants, the MEV200 and MEV300, with 155kWh and 232kWh of energy storage from repurposed EV battery packs. Reusing those packs avoids an estimated 15 to 24 tonnes of CO2e per MEV compared with new cells, often imported from China. Allye’s PackFlex technology gives each pack independent battery management and power control, so packs of different sizes, ages and chemistries can share a cabinet. An 800V architecture maximises efficiency and power, and serves both 400V and 800V vehicles. Capacity and power can be upgraded on site, with minimal disruption and no new groundworks.
Plug and play
Power in hours, not years: MEV can be charging vehicles within a few hours of arriving on site, connected through industrial sockets or hard-wired, and is designed to fit within permitted development. Allye handles everything from site survey to commissioning. If a depot relocates or a lease ends, the MEV smart charger can be removed and re-sited at minimal cost.
Robert Carter, Chief Technology Officer at Allye Energy, said: “MEV is the direct result of our work on the MAX300. The hard part was never the battery. It was making packs of different sizes and ages behave as one system and deliver up to 400kW of DC charging through an 800V architecture and our in-house technology stack. Once we had solved that, MEV was the obvious next step: the same architecture in a cabinet that only ever charges, where one pack can slide out for service while the others keep charging.”
Safer, smarter, always available
Safety starts with the driver. In a 2024 AA and Electrifying.com survey of 11,565 drivers, 55% of women said concern for their personal safety at charge points was a reason not to switch to an electric car. MEV is designed around the factors that independent ratings such as ChargeSafe assess. Intelligent lighting creates a “technology handshake”: the unit stays dark when no one is near, wakes on approach, and lights connectors and the ground around them with shielded, low-glare light. Cameras cover bays and cables, recording on approach.
The unit is protected too. Cable theft is now a leading cause of charger downtime: one of the UK’s largest rapid-charging networks has seen nearly half of its 2,100 sites targeted in two years, with each cable costing around £1,000 to replace for £25 of copper. Every MEV cable has cut detection, forensic marking and quick-release terminals for fast replacement. Inside, each battery pack has a pyro fuse to isolate its high-voltage circuits, with off-gas detection and fire barriers between packs as standard, and fire suppression available for critical sites.
For charge point operators (CPOs), MEV keeps bays working. Smart lighting shows each charger’s status at a glance, and optional AI bay monitoring flags a car blocking a charger or an EV overstaying. At high-footfall public sites, the 65-inch front screen can carry advertising between sessions, with 65-inch side screens as an option: low-glare, updated remotely and switched on or off as the site needs, turning the charger into a source of income.
MAX powers anything, anywhere. MEV charges your fleet where it parks.
MEV stays put at the depot and charges the fleet where it parks, from the supply already there. It is built on the MAX300’s proven architecture, power electronics and integrated DC fast charging, developed with support from the Advanced Propulsion Centre’s Mobilise programme. The MAX300, by contrast, goes wherever energy is needed: fixed or mobile, it powers sites, replaces diesel generators and charges vehicles at up to 400kW through its own integrated DC fast charging or by feeding satellite chargers. On its integrated trailer it weighs under 3.5 tonnes, so a van or pick-up can tow it on a standard car licence (Category B). Many fleets will use both. The MAX300 starts at £78,000 as a storage system, or £99,000 as a stationary unit with integrated DC fast charging.
Lower cost over its lifetime
A battery-buffered charger can cost more to buy than a conventional one, but it costs less to own. Because MEV draws a smaller supply, a depot avoids the capacity charges of a bigger connection: about £8,900 a year for an extra 200kVA on National Grid Electricity Distribution’s 2026/27 South West tariff. MEV recharges overnight at off-peak rates and charges vehicles from its own battery during the weekday evening peak, when network charges are more than 100 times higher. With the MAX range’s energy management software on board, it can also trade in the wholesale market through a virtual lead party, as rule change P415 has allowed since 2024, and earn from grid services when not charging. On these figures, a MEV200 is designed to recover its premium over a conventional 200kW charger in 2 to 3 years, and to save £50,000 to £110,000 over ten years, before any grid upgrade avoided.
Charging as a service
As with the MAX range’s energy storage as a service (ESaaS), MEV is available as EV charging as a service (EVCaaS): one fully inclusive monthly fee with no capital cost, from £1,900 a month for a MEV200. Fleets, depots and local authorities can turn charging from a capital project into an operating cost, adding chargers as their fleets grow rather than paying for capacity years in advance.
Jonathan Carrier, Founder and CEO of Allye Energy, said: “We have built two ranges, not two versions of the same thing. If the charger stays put and only ever charges vehicles, MEV does it on the supply you already have, often for less than the connection works it replaces. If the energy needs to move, towed behind a van or feeding a row of chargers, that is the MAX300. But better products are only half the answer. To deploy charging at the pace the transition needs, we have to make it far cheaper, and that takes innovation in the business model and the supply chain as well as the product. Charging as a service, a monthly fee instead of a capital bill, is how fleets, depots and local authorities get more charging for less.”
Proven in service
MEV arrives with a track record. More than 20 MAX systems, built from over 100 repurposed batteries, are in service with customers including JLR and Roadchef, and 60% of Allye’s customers have come back for more. At Roadchef’s Killington Lake services on the M6, a MAX300 has run for more than two years on a fixed 315A supply shared by shops, a hotel and EV chargers, adding power before demand hits the limit. In its first year it prevented 12 site trips, each able to cut power for up to four hours, and saved around £120,000 with no grid upgrade. Only around 10% of England’s 114 motorway service areas have the power capacity needed for projected charging demand, according to the National Audit Office. On the Lower Thames Crossing, National Highways’ most ambitious scheme in 35 years and one of the world’s largest zero-emission construction sites, MAX500 units are charging electric excavators, with over 900 sessions and more than 126MWh delivered.
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