According to Zap- Map, a data company, last year saw 8,700 public chargers installed across the UK, bringing the national total to over 38,000.
While this represents an annual growth rate of over 30 per cent, it remains below the increase in the number of EV’s sold in the UK in 2022, which grew by 38 per cent.
The UK has some way to go to match the performance of Norway where in 2022 four out of five new cars sold were battery powered and which has achieved the world's highest proportion of electric vehicles with the help of generous subsidies.
The UK government has set a target of 300,000 publicly available chargers by 2030, so this 30 per cent increase in installations should be viewed as good news and suggests that that target is likely to be met.
Funding is readily available for the roll out of EV charging points and more rapid and ultra-rapid chargers are now being rolled out in significant numbers with the likes of Tesla, Instavolt, BP and Shell now getting involved.
There are still concerns that not all these installations are being rolled out in the right places, however, and that many local authorities are not acting quickly enough.
According to Justin Godfrey-Cass, Head of Transport Solutions at Wireless Logic the wider rollout of chargers is being hampered by planning constraints, cost of installation, access problems, and the need for resilient and highly secure two-way connectivity in locations where wired infrastructure isn’t readily available.
While the UK government can’t ensure that EV’s deliver the performance their manufacturers claims, they can certainly help to ensure that charging points meet the demands of electric vehicle users which means making sure that charging points are always fully operational, keep their data secure and correctly bill consumers.
In turn equipment managers and charge point operators need to ensure secure, resilient, and reliable connectivity that allows them to monitor charging points effectively remotely.
Even in Norway that’s been a challenge. The Norwegian government has been accused of failing to address one of the main practical problems for electric car owners and that’s how to pay for the use of charging stations – currently 10-15 apps are required by EV owners in Norway in order to access the national network of EV chargers and, as a result, many consumers are delaying their purchase of an EV.
Here in the UK, government and construction companies must address these different problems especially as the EV charging point roll out accelerates and the network becomes a critical piece of public national infrastructure.
