Surprise surprise, the UK doesn’t have nearly enough electric car chargers
A new report has found that the UK doesn’t have nearly enough electric car charging stations, and that the situation is only going to get worse as the environmentally friendly cars become more popular.
Already Alphr says that there are nine plug-in electric vehicles for every one charging station. The Emu Analytics report notes that a 83% increase in charge points will be needed to cover the amount of electric vehicles that are expected to be on the road in 2020.
Between 2014 and 2017, the amount of electric cars sold increased by 600%. The report expects the total number to reach one million by 2020, which will require around 83,500 charging points.
Meanwhile, in 2018 we currently have just 16,500 of the stations. This report was based on data from the National Charge Point Registry, a government database of registered charge points across the UK. However, some have criticised the report’s use of this particular data set, which they claim is out of date.
A need for on-the-go charging
In an ideal world every electric car owner would be able to install a charging station at home (hopefully powered by a lovely set of solar-panels) and rely wholly on that for all of their electric range.
But there’ll inevitably be occasions when a vehicle needs to go outside of its range, or else an owner doesn’t have a garage or parking bay where they can easily install a charging point at home.
The charging stations needed aren’t going to come cheap, but when you think about it they’re actually far more convenient than traditional gas stations which cumulatively require hundreds of tanker trucks to keep them stocked up with fuel. Each of these trucks adds its own pollution to the atmosphere with each journey made.
Conversely, once the network of charging stations is in place, electricity will be easily delivered to them automatically via the national grid.
The good news is that the government has already set aside £440 million to invest in a charging infrastructure, but this budget will need to work hard to cover the necessary increase in charge points.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.