UK has almost 1M EV chargers, with new public one installed every 25 minutes

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/15/electric-vehicle-ev-chargers-uk-installations

by Capstanlqc • 2 years ago

80 120 2 years ago

“There were 930,000 UK chargers at the end of June, according to ChargeUK, a lobby group, but the majority of these have been installed in homes and business premises, with only about 65,000 public chargers available.”

The article does not break down the 65K public chargers or the added chargers by charging speed.

krona• 2 years ago

Nor does it mention how many of those chargers actually work.

dark-star• 2 years ago

yeah, I have seen this in Germany as well. I guess the companies get incentives for installing these chargers, and then just let them sit there until they rot

In our city (~100k) alone I have spotted over 10 chargers that have been defective for at least half a year, some even longer than 1 year. And that's only those that I regularly drive to.

As long as there are no requirements to actually service them and have them in a working condition, the raw numbers of installed chargers are meaningless

jillesvangurp2• 2 years ago

They are not all rapid chargers of course. But the point is that mostly those are only needed if you run out of juice on a longer journey. For most normal drivers that only happens a few times a year. Otherwise you just top up at home or using one of the many slow chargers overnight or in a few hours while you are doing something else.

My parents in the Netherlands bought an EV two years ago. They live in an apartment without their own charger in the building. Mostly my father just uses one of several public slow chargers in the neighborhood; once a week or so. He checks on his phone when one is available, drives there and plugs in. They also use chargers at hotels when they are traveling and are typically booking things with chargers available. Destination charging is a thing. Drive somewhere, plug in, do what you came to do, and drive back with enough charge to get home.

They went on a longer trip to France half a year ago. That's the first time he used a rapid charger. The most stressful thing with that is figuring out the payment systems. It's getting better but there are still way too many options for that. Recently Tesla super chargers became an option as well for them (lots of those) and those seem to work best. They drive a Renault.

Anyway, this is very typical behavior with EVs. You charge when it's convenient instead of when you have to. Mostly you are not going to run out on a normal day. It's only on longer journeys that you need to do a bit of planning (make sure the car is charged up before you leave, pick where & when to rapid charge). The worst case is having to take a 45 minute break or so when it's not convenient. That can happen but mostly you can plan to combine that with lunch or something else. And my father is 75, so he needs to have breaks more frequently than the car.

atonse4• 2 years ago

This might be a very American-centric view but I usually tell people that if you have a garage or driveway then your electric car ownership will be a dream where you truly stop thinking about range.

But if you don't, I can imagine there being more stress about charging times, fast chargers, etc.

For road trips, thanks to Tesla's extensive Supercharger network, they are really great for that.

But with more standards (CCS and NACS) becoming pervasive, hopefully this becomes an issue of the past (payments, etc).

My big question is, I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?

blowfish721• 2 years ago

Germany seems to be forcing this through law in a few years. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Elektroautos-Bundesregierung-be...

coldpie4• 2 years ago

Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?

It's a good question. I don't know for certain, but my hypothesis would be because of what you and the OP said:

Destination charging is a thing. Drive somewhere, plug in, do what you came to do, and drive back with enough charge to get home.
if you have a garage or driveway then your electric car ownership will be a dream where you truly stop thinking about range

No one goes to a gas station to hang out, you know? Instead you plug in at work, or the mall, or the restaurant, or just don't bother until you get home. It doesn't make sense to spend your 20+ minute charge time at a gas station.

dangus• 2 years ago

Which makes America perfect for EVs. Over half of Americans live in single family homes.

Well, almost perfect. Being on 110V in residences is a downside.

alephnerd• 2 years ago

I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board

Depends on the energy company.

Some like BP, Chevron, and Idemitsu Kosan began investing fairly heavily in renewables and battery technology (eg. ownership in solar development, owning and licensing battery and charging IP, etc) for diversification reasons.

Others did not, and don't want to end up paying competitors.

Furthermore, gas stations are themselves just franchises so the franchisee might have to eat the cost of installation.

Chevron owns Chargepoint so they were able to scale charging infra to their stations, but other competitors might not want to subsidize Chevron corporate and leave it to the franchise.

cduzz4• 2 years ago

L3 charging requires a ton of very specific infrastructure.

Around where I live tesla's got some co-generation going on near by where they've got natural gas -> fuel cell -> supercharger setups (bloom energy runs one and I forget the other).

Absent that you need the power company to pipe in some serious power feeds and those aren't always convenient to trench into where you've already got a gas station.

lotsofpulp3• 2 years ago

I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?

Oil companies’ involvement with gas stations is only to the extent of selling their brand to the gas station operator. I don’t think I have ever heard of an oil company itself operating a gas station, I doubt they even own a single one.

SketchySeaBeast• 2 years ago

I have a garage, and I struggle with thinking an electric car would be a dream. It's an old detached garage and doesn't have the electrical infrastructure required to provide fast charging. It seems like it'd be another $10k worth of expenses (I assume something like that for the trenching and installation) on top of the car.

pjc509• 2 years ago

UK motorway service stations seem to have chargers, and to be expanding them in response to demand. Last time I was in one I saw the two occupied chargers next to a whole row of a dozen under-construction chargers. I'm not sure what the cost of those is, though.

Reason0772• 2 years ago

"Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?"

There are many chargers at gas ("petrol") stations in the UK. There are even a few stations that have been completely converted, with the pumps removed and replaced with chargers only.

For example, Shell Fulham in London: https://find.shell.com/gb/fuel/10018937-shell-recharge-waitr...

Installing high-power charging does depend on having a suitable grid connection available, of course. For some gas station locations, getting enough power to the site might be impractical or uneconomic.

jillesvangurp2• 2 years ago

My big question is, I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?

That will come. This is already happening in the EU. The US is just lagging the rest of the world a bit here with EV adoption and charging infrastructure.

But if you think about it: what happens when you remove 40% of the demand for petrol and diesel from the market? Because that's what happens when those driving the most and the furthest switch to electric: they stop buying lots of petrol and diesel. And early adopters tend to be the ones driving the most. So, demand takes a big hit fairy early in the transition.

What happens is very simple: petrol and diesel stations start losing a lot of business. Until they realize that they have the perfect locations for charging and that people will want to buy from their shops and restaurants while they are charging. So, of course they are going to adapt in a hurry and invest in charging infrastructure as this starts happening.

Long term, petrol and diesel are going to be a minor side hustle for rapid charging stations where most of the revenues come from people waiting for their vehicles to charge buying snacks, refreshments, and other stuff.

tzs2• 2 years ago

My big question is, I don't understand why the oil companies haven't gotten on board. Why aren't we seeing more and more L3 chargers at gas stations?

I'd guess that in the US one factor might be that a large fraction of gas stations are also convenience stores and most of them make more money from the convenience store side of the business than from the gas side of the business.

The convenience store has two kinds of customers. One is people who are there to get gas but also pick up something in the convenience store. The other is people who come specifically for the convenience store.

Space outside not used for cars that are at the gas pumps is usually used for parking for the people who are there for the convenience store.

If they add EV chargers that are separate from the pumps they will probably have to reduce the parking space for convenience store customers. So they are replacing spots currently used by people who are there for a usually short visit to the convenience store with spots for people who are there to charge EVs.

Even if 100% of EV charging customers also use the convenience store it still reduces convenience store volume because they occupy a spot longer than the people who are there just to use the convenience store. Plus there will be people who are there just to charge and will not use the convenience store.

If they add the EV chargers where the gas pumps are, then the EV charging customers are replacing gas buying customers and so again their is a reduction in turnover because EV charging is slower. Because EV charging is slower I'd guess there is a larger chance that an EV charging customer will decide to also use the convenience store than there is that an gas customer will, so that might compensate some for the lower turnover but I'd guess that it would still be a net reduction in convenience store business.

nashashmi2• 2 years ago

If majority of them are not rapid chargers, and once they all become rapid chargers, won't we have too many chargers then? the time it takes to charge a vehicle will be 2 hours vs 8 hours of slow charging occupying the same spot.

toyg2• 2 years ago

He checks on his phone when one is available, drives there and plugs in.

One more things on the busy todo list - not a biggie for a retiree for sure.

oliwarner• 2 years ago

Isn't that expensive?

Where I am in the UK, the unit rate at home is ~10p, while it's 40-50p at a public charger. I can get the home rate even cheaper (5p/kWh) with good timing.

pornel6• 2 years ago

Charging has gotten pretty decent in the last couple of years.

I used to be annoyed that signs for highway services don't show which ones have chargers, but they've fixed that by installing chargers at every one of them (at least along my routes).

It's even better in western Europe, where Ionity and Fastned have a pretty dense coverage of 300kW chargers.

I've been road tripping around the UK and Europe for the last three summers, and it's been easy peasy.

Hyundai has a universal charging card that works with the majority of minor crappy charging networks, which solves the pain of having to install seventeen different charging apps.

Rinzler892• 2 years ago

It's even better in western Europe

Where? Because here in Austria public EV charging infrastructure is next to non existent.

Ironically it's best in Vienna where car ownership is lowest due to excellent public transportation but next to no existing in the other smaller cities where car ownership is highest.

It's bonkers.

pornel6• 2 years ago

I have first hand good experience from France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany. I've also driven across Poland, and that was where I had to start planning charging, rather than just go wherever, which is why I say west Europe, not just EU.

Austria looks less dense than Germany and Switzerland, but still good – DC fast chargers along highways, and over 100 fast chargers in Vienna.

Austrian Alps have poorer coverage, but that's not surprising — there aren't many roads there either, but still there are enough chargers to cross them in an EV, so at least as a tourist I don't think I'd have major difficulty.

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/

mnw21cam• 2 years ago

The whole paying for charging thing needs to die a painful and fiery death. I have a universal (money) charging card in my wallet - it was issued by my bank. There should be nothing else required to pay for charging a car up.

Same with parking. Most car parks around here accept only coins (and I stopped carrying coins about 5 years ago) or pay-by-phone, which always charges more than the advertised parking price and is usually conveniently located in a mobile phone dead spot. Parking meters used to accept contactless card payments - what gives?

ramesh31• 2 years ago

The UK seems like it should be a slam dunk for EV adoption; moderate climate, high gas prices, short distances, and an affluent populace. Yet Germany (and Europe at large) is handily beating them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country

Why is this?

stuartjohnson12• 2 years ago

Our luddite conspiracy theory faction seems more organised than the rest of Europe. Pushing measures to encourage green adoption runs the risk of attracting the ire of an exceptionally loud and persistent minority who are convinced by things like the bizarre conspiracy theory[1] that policies to curb pollution are part of a great plot to control how often you're allowed to go to the shops.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66990302

simonbarker878• 2 years ago

Population density explains a lot of difference between UK and Europe.

arethuza• 2 years ago

That does rather depend where you live in the UK though and also where you regularly travel to...

pjc509• 2 years ago

Seem fairly similar, although the UK is denser than all of Europe except Belgium, Netherlands and the microstates. Is that good or bad for EV adoption? Is it skewed by Londoners often not having cars at all?

swarnie2• 2 years ago

Personally its because there was a lot of question mark hanging over second hand EVs for ages. If i buy this car for £10k will it need a new 8k battery in 18 months?

I don't know if this is still accurate but it was top of my mind 5 years ago when i last changed one of our cars. Ill consider EVs again next year when one is due for replacement at which point ill need to total up the additional home infrastructure in the price.

pornel6• 2 years ago

There's over a decade of real-world data available from Tesla and Leaf, and the batteries are very long-lived: they degrade about 1%-2% per year with a good battery management system, and around 3% per year with Leaf's weaksauce one.

Additionally, batteries are getting cheaper and more energy dense, so when it's time to replace them, you'll probably get an upgrade for cheaper. Leaf started with 24kWh batteries, and now you get 40kWh for the same price, and a 64kWh upgrade option.

People often extrapolate from their experience with cell phone batteries, but these "lithium" and those "lithium" batteries are very different. There are different chemistries, different conditioning with active cooling/heating, different rates of discharge, and a big difference in redundancy when you have 1 cell vs 7000 of them.

thebruce87m3• 2 years ago

Many of them come with generous battery warranties. Tesla has 8 years: https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/support/vehicle-warranty

pjc509• 2 years ago

I'm starting to see quite a few on the roads, with the distinctive green flash on the numberplate. The arrival of "MG" (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, but doing business as a traditional British brand) has helped.

But the built environment is against us; too many people rely on on-street parking. And the recent spike in electricity prices last winter has badly damaged the cost competitiveness argument.

ageitgey2• 2 years ago

What do you mean? The UK and Germany have very similar EV adoption (~24% of car sales in 2023).

graemep2• 2 years ago

I think the biggest problem is that although people do mostly short journeys, a lot of people do some long journeys too.

I mostly drive within a few miles, or at most 15 of so miles of where I live. However, I occasionally go say 200 miles without a convenient chance to recharge (have done so twice in the last month). I know people who drive much further - e.g. one regularly drives from the Midlands to the North of Scotland.

There are also people who do not have a car at all (I never did when I lived in London, nor in Manchester till I had a child) or who drive very little. If you do low mileage the case (financial and environmental) for using an EV is a lot weaker.

A lot of houses have no where to put a charger - lots of on-street parking.

I do not have the data for a proper answer, but I think it has to do with patterns of usage and housing.

Symbiote2• 2 years ago

5.0% vs 5.4% of cars on the road?

That's probably the slightly higher incomes in Germany.

cameronh902• 2 years ago

Personally (in the UK) I don't have an EV because I only drive about 2000 miles a year. Even with our high petrol prices, it's still not worth paying the EV premium versus a "cheap run-around" ICE car.

While I do drive below the UK norm, the the mode miles per car is only get about 3500 miles per year and the median about 7000. Last time I looked into it (which admittedly was during COVID crazy car price era), when comparing cars lb for lb, it only really made sense to get an EV if you plan to drive it more than 10k miles per year. High electric prices don't help.

That being said, I'd imagine for most people the decision as to which sort of car to buy is more about emotion and presentation than it is about cold hard logic.

thebruce87m3• 2 years ago

High electric prices don't help.

Octopus gives me 7.5p per kWh at night, working out about 3p/mile for me vs about 12p/mile for my old diesel.

Not sure how you got 10k miles, but every mile is cheaper if you just look at fuel and can charge at home.

graemep2• 2 years ago

On 65k public chargers though and only another 20k added per year.

There are close to 30m households so only about 3% of households have a charger.

thebruce87m3• 2 years ago

Of households in Great Britain, 18 million (65%) either have, or have the potential to offer, off-street parking for at least one vehicle.

https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/standing-st...

Lots of potential there. I guess some might just slow charge from a socket too.

simonbarker878• 2 years ago

We had a Polestar 2 as our only car for about 8 weeks at the start of the year, we knew we’d only have it for a short time so didn’t install a charger to the house.

It was a total nightmare, we had to think days ahead to any big trip to make sure we had enough charge to get us through and if we needed to charge en route it was expensive, slow and difficult to find a working charger.

We are back with an ICE vehicle now and it’s so much easier.

It’s great that we are moving toward an EV future but right now you need a dedicated charger and also be prepared to massively pay over the odds on a per mile basis if you have to charge en route somewhere.

Also every charger needs to be tap and pay and every charger should be usable by any EV, screw those Podpoints in train stations that don’t appear in the app and clearly need you to be in some secret club to access.

EDIT: I'm based in the UK

onion2k2• 2 years ago

we had to think days ahead to any big trip

Were you taking a lot of big trips without thinking about them before the Polestar?

simonbarker878• 2 years ago

Specifically we had to plan our charging for a few days ahead because, without a home charger, we couldn’t get more than a 25% charge overnight. So unless we wanted to start our journey with an expensive fast charge we would need to plan our car usage and charge strategy so that when we left for the big trip we’d have at least 80%.

With an ICE we just fill up the night before or morning of and we’re good to go with 500 miles in the tank.

cduzz4• 2 years ago

It's clear that an EV has a harder time with long distance travel than a gas vehicle.

Gas: get in car, drive until light turns on, pull into next gas station and get gas, keep driving.

EV(tesla): get in car, enter destination, car will route you to superchargers as needed

EV(!tesla): get in car, consult web sites like a better route planner, verify car's charge, verify that you have the app for each of the fast charging destination payment methods, drive to the first location and it's broken in some tedious way and now you have to hope you've got range to get to your b site.

michaelt2• 2 years ago

For sure you need at least an outdoor socket, so you can charge over night.

Google tells me the Polestar 2 has 330 miles of range, so you could do the 5h30m drive from Swansea to Norwich on a single charge - if you leave home with a full charge.

But if you can't leave home with a full charge? If you've got a complicated schedule, like using a charger at work but only working 1 day a week? I can see how that would be a lot more hassle. And public fast chargers cost 4-5x as much as charging at home too.

simonbarker878• 2 years ago

We found that 330 miles to be very unlikely as well. More like 270 and then you need to make sure you’ve got 40 miles spare to make sure you can make it to a working charge without going flat.

So in reality the comfortable working assumption should be 230 in my experience. We had the car in winter, perhaps didn’t help.

pjc509• 2 years ago

The UK is about 300 miles across and about 600 miles long, so there's not that much scope for long trips. Mind you, I've done the 400 miles of Edinburgh to south coast quite a few times myself.

(Currently thinking of getting a Peugeot E208, if anyone has any experience with those?)

itishappy3• 2 years ago

What led you to consider an EV for a temporary 2-month car intended for lots of long-distance winter trips?

simonbarker878• 2 years ago

Wife worked for Polestar at the time and finally had the chance to get on the company lease scheme. We knew she was leaving by this point but decided a couple of months with an EV was worth a try to see if it fit our lifestyle. Glad we did it, I'll try again in 10 years.

eimrine• 2 years ago

Can at least any of them to charge a car anonymously?

onion2k2• 2 years ago

In the UK you can't drive anywhere anonymously. The network of ANPR cameras is incredibly extensive.

pjc509• 2 years ago

You can't buy petrol "anonymously" in the UK: every petrol station has CCTV+ANPR to stop you stealing petrol.

swarnie2• 2 years ago

And this is why people should stick to "borrowing" red diesel from the countryside.

itishappy3• 2 years ago

Every standard outlet.

ageitgey2• 2 years ago

I realize that my experience in an upscale, somewhat suburban part of west London is not representative of the UK in general. But where I live, we've definitely "passed the tipping point" of EV adoption.

There are low speed chargers available in the streetlight poles next to street parking (low cost). There are 22kw slow/medium chargers in reserved spots throughout the neighborhood (medium cost, lower to residents). There are 250kw chargers at gas stations (high cost). The local supermarket has 10+ 250kw charging spots (high cost) and at least half are always available.

It's finally hit the point where there are always multiple charging options easily available nearby and the number of EVs parked in the neighborhood is rapidly multiplying. I see more EVs on my local streets daily.

It's a different world outside of London. Less densely populated areas of the UK can still be a bit of a nightmare for charging, especially during big travel periods. Looking at you, Cornwall.

rwmj2• 2 years ago

In the posher lanes around here (in the wealthy home counties) every single house now appears to have a charger, and the main difference between them is whether there are one or two electric cars parked outside.

toyg2• 2 years ago

This didn't happen in a vacuum though. The government effectively forced business-registered cars to become electric, with draconian tax policies and road charges; and is now forcing (with various degrees of success) petrol stations to have chargers.

UK has almost 1M EV chargers, with new public one installed every 25 minutes

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