Will the UK have enough places to charge your electric car?

Back in the days of Blair and Brown, diesel vehicles were king!

'Buy a diesel' they said - the carbon emissions are much lower than those horrible petrol cars, and you get a much higher mpg rate to boot. This, of course, is true, but we have come to see the major flaw with this policy - that of the horrible levels of particulate matter (PM) they produce, clogging up our urban atmospheres, and worst of all, our lungs!

A UK government report in 2017 on public health, estimated around 40,000 deaths a year in the UK may at least partly be attributable to the effects of air pollution. That puts a tremendous strain on the NHS and social care services, to the tune of £40 million or more!

So, when the next government realised that the diesel love-in couldn't continue, they had to make changes, but without wanting to label diesel drivers as bad people, so there was no talk of wholesale bans on diesel vehicles. And so the push to alternative fuel vehicles began, generally in the form of hybrids (identified as the key transition format) and ultimately, electric vehicles.

Then in 2017, the government announced that there would be a ban on the manufacture / sale of any new diesel and petrol cars and vans in the UK from 2040. This, and ever increasing road taxes on combustion engines, will hopefully propel the masses towards the electric vehicle (EV) market.

There is however, a slight issue....

As a survey by the Institute of the Motor Industry found in early 2017, many people like the idea of owning an EV, but about the same amount of them worry about where they are going to charge it. While battery technology is advancing rapidly, range remains relatively low, and the availability of places to re-charge are still limited (unlike petrol stations). Two years later, and there are now an estimated 210,000 EV's on the UK roads, but only around 14,000 publicly available Electric Vehicle Charge Points (EVCPs). A climate forum I attended recently, suggested this is something like 18,000 fewer than we should have by the end of 2020.

There are currently some generous grants available for the EV owner, for charging at home. The UK governments Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme (click here for more information) allows the user to get a grant of up to £500 for installation of a Smart EVCP - a smart charger is one that is 'able to be remotely accessed, and capable of receiving, interpreting and reacting to a signal. Smart charging can also reduce high peaks of electricity demands, minimising the cost of electric vehicles to the electricity system – and keeping costs down for consumers by encouraging off-peak charging.' 

Here's the kicker - a generous £4.5 million fund was made available to UK councils from 2016, to aid with the installation of new on-street charge points for as little as 25% of the usual cost. But take up has been disappointingly low. An article on Autovistagroup.com in early 2018, reported that only 5 out of 201 district authorities had taken advantage of the fund up to that point. Jack Cousens, Head of Roads Policy at the AA said, "Eight out of 10 drivers say that a lack of charging points is a reason why they will not currently buy an electric car, so the poor take-up of these seemingly generous grants is disappointing."

With EV sales going up by around 30% through 2017 and 18, the availability of these public charging facilities is falling well behind what is needed. The will of the people is there. The government assistance is also largely there (as well as the EVHS scheme mentioned above, there have also been Plug-In grants available to help customers make the switch to the admittedly, more costly EV alternatives). It is just the infrastructure that is failing. 

While EV sales are steadily increasing, they are still well behind the 9% by 2020 government target, but nonetheless it is estimated that by the time the combustion engine ban arrives in 2040, there will be over 30 million EVs on our roads! 

There are some huge leaps to be made over the next 20 years to match that ambition - and remember, this switch-over is an integral part of dealing with climate change and air pollution.