UK: Free electric vehicle charging network adds new location
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Quotezone.co.uk, one of the UK’s leading car insurance comparison platforms, recently polled 500 car insurance policyholders to gauge their feelings on electric vehicles. The survey, which spoke to both fossil fuel and EV drivers, found that a staggering 59 percent of petrol or diesel car drivers would only consider buying an EV when they “absolutely have to”.
These findings could spell doom for the Government’s plans to hit net zero, as they intend to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
Experts have warned that aside from the cost of living crisis hurting Briton’s spending power, a key concern for drivers is the lack of charging infrastructure.
Greg Wilson, Founder of Quotezone.co.uk, noted that while the number of public charging points for EVs has grown exponentially in all regions of the country, this growth has not been equal.
Speaking to Express.co.uk said: “The Department for Transport’s latest statistics show all UK regions enjoyed an increase in the number of charging devices – around the five percent mark for the majority of areas – from January to March this year, but growth was far from equal.
“While London enjoyed a 9.4 percent rise in charging devices, closely followed by the West Midlands with 9.3 percent, Northern Ireland trailed behind with a 0.9 percent increase.
“It probably goes without saying that many of these newly installed charging points are in cities, since urban centres generally have a higher concentration of electric vehicles.
“However, there is, unfortunately, a clear north-side divide when it comes to EV charging infrastructure, and that doesn’t seem to be going away even as the drive to install more ramps up.”
Figures reveal that the number of charging points has grown by 1000 percent over the past seven years, from 2,664 points in April 2015 to 30,290 in April this year.
Further illustrating the divide in charging locations, Mr Wilson said: “When the data is weighted per 100,000 people we can see that the North East has 10 percent fewer EV charging points than the South East, while Yorkshire and the Humber has a worrying 56 percent fewer public charging points.
“The devolved governments are also achieving vastly different results when it comes to EV infrastructure, with Wales now home to almost double the number of public charging points per 100,000 people as Northern Ireland, while Scotland has 54 percent more than Wales and three times as many as Northern Ireland.
“Our survey shows drivers are worried about the progress of the electric charging infrastructure, availability of public charging points was cited as an issue by 19.3 percent of respondents.
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In addition, when electric vehicle owners were asked what they didn’t like about their cars, 24.8 percent said there weren’t enough readily available charging points, followed by range anxiety (20 percent) and broken charging points (19 percent).”
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