The government is to support the UK market to reach 300,000 public electric vehicle (EV) charge-points by 2030 – that’s equivalent to almost 5 times the number of fuel pumps on UK roads today.
Backed by £1.6 billion, under the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy, the government has said that charging will become easier and cheaper, while new legal requirements on operators will see EV drivers able to pay by contactless, compare charging prices and find nearby charge-points via apps.
The strategy is intended to deliver a robust and fair network that covers the entire country.
However, Simon Tucker, Managing Partner & Head of Energy, Utilities, Resources and Services EMEA at Infosys Consulting while welcoming the investment in public charge points across the UK, which he said was desperately needed, warned that the broader infrastructure still wasn’t in place and that the digital experience was also lacking.
“Even if charging ports were more widespread, there’s currently no ability to roam between networks and charge with other providers,” he said.
Countries like Norway and Sweden are much further ahead than the UK, but that’s because they built the infrastructure before the cars.
“Although this new pledge is a step towards correcting the UK’s backwards approach to EV roll-out, we have been running before we could walk,” Tucker suggested, and he certainly has a point.
