UK Installs Nearly 6,000 Public EV Chargers in First 3 Months of 2024

The BP Gigahub Pulse EV electric vehicle charging hub on the National Exhibition Centre campus in Birmingham, UK on Feb. 23, 2024. The public hub opened as the UK’s largest in September 2023. John Keeble / Getty Images

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The United Kingdom installed nearly 6,000 new public electric vehicle (EV) chargers in the first three months of this year — a record number — in the race to accommodate the influx of battery-powered cars.

The quarterly figures were provided by Bristol-based data company ZapMap and published by the UK’s Department for Transport.

“I think there is a coming together of two things,” said Ben Nelmes, chief executive of EV thinktank New AutoMotive, as The Guardian reported. “Some of the barriers have been mitigated. And the private sector has woken up to the opportunity.”

Nelmes pointed out that local councils had gradually been taking advantage of charger installation grants provided by the central government.

Roughly 1,500 of the new installations were rapid chargers, which can charge a car in under an hour.

At the end of April, the UK had 61,232 EV charging points at 32,697 charging stations, ZapMap said. That’s a 45 percent increase in total chargers since April of last year.

Nelmes said the recent expansion of charging infrastructure in the UK had brought public charging stations to areas that had been historically underserved, reported Electrek.

Higher interest rates have affected the sales of some major EV companies like Tesla and BYD in China, The Guardian reported.

The share of total car sales in the UK that are EVs has plateaued at 15.5 percent in 2024, following earlier fast growth.

Some people who are in the market for a new car have expressed concern about EV range or lack of adequate charging stations. The UK is addressing the issue by increasing the number of chargers, especially in areas where demand is high.

In a survey conducted by the Electric Vehicle Association last year, just six percent of England’s EV owners said they had range anxiety fairly or very often. Occasional, rare or a complete lack of range anxiety was reported by 94 percent of those taking the survey.

More than half of London’s 15,000 black cabs are hybrid-electric with range-extending internal combustion engines, reported Electrek. Most of the city’s biggest minicab and taxi services have committed to using fleets that are fully electric by next year.

The amount of charging stations and individual chargers varies greatly by region in the UK. London is the best place to own an EV for the number of chargers, with 221 per 100,000 people. Off-street parking can be hard to come by in the capital city of approximately nine million, so EV owners must rely on public charging stations.

Northeast England is the fastest growing region for the number of chargers per person, with the southwest part of the country in second place. Northern Ireland had the least number of chargers in the UK with just 29 for every 100,000 people.

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