As we all know by now, the UK is planning a ban on combustion engine vehicles by 2030. However, recently the government has been criticised for not funding the installation of enough charge points to support this.
Currently the UK has 35,000 charge points across the country but it is predicted that we will need to increase this to 400,000 if we are going to make the full transition to EV.
In the past few years, the yearly amount of EV charging points installed was 7,000 but the rate will needs to increase to 35,000 per year to keep up with the boom in EVs and to make EVs convenient for the public. In 2020, the government’s budget outlined the bold plan that no EV driver should be more than 30miles away from a public rapid charger at any point in time. This claim was also backed by a £500 million grant to install fast charge points.
Policy Exchange released a document entitled “Charge Up” which warns the government of how under prepared they are for the switch to EVs. Moreover, the document accused the government of prioritising cities and neglecting rural areas. The document recommends that the government allows competitive tenders to be drawn up for areas that have been left behind.
These rural areas which the government has failed to invest in have been called “EV charging blackspots”. This puts residents and businesses of these areas at a huge disadvantage when it comes to EVs with those businesses not being able to go electric with their fleets of vehicles.
The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps still confidently claims that the UK’s charging infrastructure is among the best in the world and announced £20million of funding for local authorities to install 4,000 further on-street charge points across the UK. He also bounced that £1.3billion towards charging infrastructure over the next 4 years.
We can only hope that the number of charge points hugely increases over the next few years to make the switch to EVs as smooth as possible.
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