In the course of the past 12 months, the automotive industry has successfully moved discussion on from there not being sufficient or sufficiently capable electric vehicles to there not being sufficient or sufficiently capable public chargers.
Be careful what you wish for: now the EV purchasing grant has been pulled and a greater focus is on ensuring the roll-out of more chargers.
What’s really interesting, though, is that (mainly) private investment is already resulting in giant strides in transforming the infrastructure. It’s not there yet in terms of capability or geographical spread but, barring a few outliers, it’s not far off.
The irony, of course, is that buying a new EV to take advantage of them quickly is almost impossible right now.
It doesn’t fit the anti-EV narrative (which notably and predictably is being weaponised by the right wing, along with any ‘green’ agenda); but there is a truth that the charging network is on a growth trajectory that means it’s likely months rather than years away from being fit for purpose, albeit under pressure forever after to maintain that position as more EVs are bought.
Data supports that view. Tom Riley, whose Fastcharge email newsletter provides a regular take on the industry, recently analysed Zap-Map data, noting there are now 32,011 chargers in the UK, 5974 of which are classed as rapid (typically 50kW or above). Of note, the most rapids (480 out of a total of 1721) ever were installed in the most recent quarter.
Quantity and quality are very different, though, and here pressure is ramping up. Crucially, the government is set to mandate rules soon around 99% uptime of rapid chargers. Riley’s data on the UK’s top eight providers suggests that only Tesla (no failures) and Gridserve (1%) would currently clear this hurdle, although Instavolt and Osprey are within a fraction, just 2% down.
Of more concern are the outliers. At the point of Riley’s analysis, Charge Scotland had 7% of its chargers down, Pod Point 10%, BP Pulse 11% and Genie a scarcely believable 26% – an awful statistic when you consider that it’s the fourth largest rapid charger operator in the UK, with 560 devices. These are the sorts of statistics that feed the anti-EV narrative.
There are significant regional variations, too. The five fastest-growing regions are London (40% up year on year), Yorkshire (39.6%), West Midlands (35.5%) and the east of England (32.8%). The north-east, the southwest and Wales all grew by 30%, while the south-east (24.7%), the north-west (23.7%) and Scotland (16.5%) lagged.
The progress largely matches the sales data – although that in itself risks being self-fulfilling.
More needs to be done, of course. But the truth is that driving an EV long distances is now eminently possible. How far we’ve come, and how quickly.
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