EV charging in the UK – what’s the current picture?

Worried that if you buy an electric car, you’ll be short of places to charge it on the move? It seems that stories about the slow pace of public EV charging point installation are off the mark. Here’s our take on the booming growth in new charging points.

There’ll be a lot of stats to follow, but they are very revealing. The UK has an estimated 1.25 million EVs on the road according to Zapmap, the EV locating app, as of the end of September 2024. That’s still not a big number – around 3.75% of the 34+ million cars on UK roads – but it’s growing by thousands of new electric cars and vans every month.

Also, according to Zapmap, at the end of September 2024, there were 70,434 public electric vehicle charging points across the UK, across 35,810 charging locations and 103, 593 connectors. Finally, on top of those 103,593 public plugs, it’s estimated that there are about 850,000 private home charging points in the UK and nearly 60,000 private workplace charging points. That adds up to more than a million dedicated EV connectors to plug in 1.25 million cars – not including anyone who still wants to use a regular three-point wall plug, of course.

Source: ZapMap, September 2024

ChargeUK is the trade association which represents 40 of charging infrastructure companies in the UK.

It says that charge point numbers have more than doubled in the past two years. During April to June 2024 a new public charge point was installed every 25 minutes. Availability is now rising faster than the number of new EVs coming onto the market and it says that if the current today’s growth continues, the UK will have in excess of 300,000 public chargers by 2030, which is the government target.

How does this compare with other countries?

Let’s take out nearest neighbour France, which is about 2.3 times bigger than the UK and has a population of 66.5 million.

The UK of course is more densely populated, with 69.2 million people. As of the end of November 2023, France had 114,386 publicly accessible charging points for its 1.1m pure EVs and is aiming to get to 400,000 by 2030.

How are public charge points distributed in the UK?

In England, it’s still fairly slanted to the South of England. Zapmap says that the geographical area with most EV charging points is Greater London with 21,965, followed by the South East with 8,732 and West Midlands with 6,107 (although these stats aggregate all the different types of charge devices).

That said, in London especially, many car owners live in flats and charging at home simply isn’t possible.

So, for London councils to meet their emission reduction targets they are having to step up the pace of on-street charging. Balancing that, which isn’t mentioned anywhere near as often, is the fact that car ownership rates are significantly lower among people living in flats and in large cities than in suburban or rural areas. Wales has around 3,000 public charging points, Scotland around 5,900 and Northern Ireland 639 as of the end of September 2024.

Adding the home option

In comparison, there are about 8,000 petrol stations in the UK, a figure in decline, so if you say that on average each station has at least six pumps then a conservative 48,000 ‘charge points’ for petrol and diesel vehicles excluding HGVs.

But – and it’s a big but – published ratios of EVs-to-public charge points often ignore home and workplace charging, perpetuating the myth that charging an EV is largely done at public points. And you’ve never been able to have your own petrol pump on your driveway. ChargeUK says that if you add in home and work chargers (estimated at around 810,000 and 58,800) to public chargers you get to over 930,000 chargers supporting 1.1 million fully electric vehicles (EVs), meaning that there is almost one charger for every EV in the UK, which is close to Norway, always hailed as a great example (pop.

5.6m). EVA England reported that although the majority of drivers do charge at home the majority of the time, 92% also use public charge points. However, as with petrol or diesel cars, topping up your car at a motorway services is always much more expensive than anywhere else, so you only put in as much petrol or electricity as you need to get you to somewhere cheaper.

What are the different places to find public charge points?

You’ll find public chargers at places you’d visit and park to do something else (destination charging) such as supermarkets, gyms, hotels and public cars parks, then streetside parking by dedicated charging bays and posts or lamppost charging points.

Then there are en-route chargers, which you might think of as only at motorway services, but there are growing number of charging hubs. These are usually near motorways or major roads and most of the space is devoted to chargers, perhaps with a coffee shop attached. There are 302 such hubs with six or more 50kW+ devices across England.

For example, in Devon Osprey has installed 16 ultra-rapid chargers just off the A38 Devon Expressway at Salmons Leap, Buckfastleigh. InstaVolt has 32 high-powered chargers in Stroud Park, close to the M40 motorway at a leisure park next the Banbury exit. It has a coffee shop, restaurant, and hotel on site.

The different charging speeds of chargers

There are currently four terms used to describe the speed of public chargers: slow, fast, rapid and ultra-rapid which deliver different voltages, so vary in how long they will take to recharge a car.

Slow charging is rated 3kW-7kW and make up the majority of public charge points. Most home chargers are about 7kW and most lampposts are 3kW, which is very slow. A typical electric car (60kWh battery) takes just under 16 hours to charge from empty to full using a 3kW charging point.

But, of course, most owners are not putting their cars onto charge from a completely empty battery. Fast is defined at 8-49kW, then comes rapid (50-149kW) which the vast majority of EVs can benefit from, and ultra-rapid (150kW+). On the whole only the more expensive cars can use ultra-rapid chargers.

A Porsche Taycan GTS can charge at 270kW. You’ll most likely find ultra-rapid chargers at motorway services or at dealerships for that brand. As of September 2024, Frankley on the M5 southbound was the English motorway services with most ultra rapid chargers at 28, the M4 Reading westbound 25.

Ultra-rapid chargers are booming. According to Zapmap, as of September 2024, there were 13,706 rapid or ultra-rapid charging devices, across 5,762 charging locations in the UK. More than 2,300 have been installed this year.

Although the previous government’s 2022 target to have six or more high powered chargers at every motorway services areas in England by the end of 2023 hasn’t been met, it was then talking about 50kW+ chargers and this has been outpaced by 150kW chargers. As they charge more quickly, they can serve more cars. For those EV drivers who’ve looked wistfully at lines of vacant Tesla chargers (up to 250kW), Tesla is now starting to allow drivers of any make of EV to use their chargers at four of them – but check first!

Why are they going in so fast?

“The original announcement of 2030 as the phase out date for sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles back in 2020 gave infrastructure investors the signal they needed to invest,” says ChargeUK, CEO, Vicky Read. “This clear government policy led to investment flooding in, allowing the sector to grow and accelerate deployment, and we are now seeing the benefits of that positive signposting from government, albeit the subsequent move to 2035 did dent confidence.”

The last government’s view was that private businesses should be left to drive the market but whether a site is commercially viable depends on location, EV density in the local area, the commercial arrangement reached with the landlord, which can be public or private, as well as charge point operators’ business and investment models. The government’s part is to provide them with planning support and incentives. Two funds (set up several years ago) are meant to encourage the private sector to deliver charging points.

The rapid charging fund (RCF) is to ‘enable a comprehensive ultra-rapid charging network by funding prohibitively expensive grid connections’. In its pilot phase it will fund a portion of the cost of upgrading connections at motorway service areas in England only. The Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund supports local authorities in England to plan and deliver charging infrastructure for residents without off-street parking.

It provides capital funding to support charging point delivery and ‘capability funding’ to ensure that local authorities have the staff and capability to plan and deliver charging infrastructure Funds aside, as it’s left to the marketplace, it’s still a challenge to get private companies to put chargers in less profitable locations if it’s not profitable. This can mean that, beyond motorways, more rural areas miss out.

Are there any brakes to progress?

ChargeUK says that while overall availability is good the deployment of charging in some locations, such as on-street, has been held back because of delays to the public funding schemes.

Like the car makers, they would also wish for a predictable EV sales market, which it certainly isn’t as far as private buyers are concerned.

What about petrol stations and charge points?

Petrol and diesel pumps are going to be available for years to come, but there will be fewer filling stations. Logically, some oil companies have really got on board with public electric charging. Shell says it is on track to meeting its ambition of 10,000 chargers at UK forecourts and on streets by the end of the year.

Of these, 1,000 on these are on forecourts and at destination hubs. In 2024 it went live with 13 new sites with six or more rapid or ultra rapid chargers with more to come before the end of the year. Overall, it now has 14 hubs with eight or more chargers.

Shell is also working with Aldi to put Shell Recharge charge points in 58 new stores, adding to eight existing sites. BP Pulse is mostly focussed on charging hubs and operates over 3,000 high-speed charge points across the UK. It’s developing EV charging hubs at major transport intersections, on trunk roads and at the heart of the UK road network.

Nine EV hubs, each with at least six ultra-fast charge points, were added in 2023 bringing the total to 20 hubs, including the UK’s largest at the NEC Birmingham, the Gigahub, which can simultaneously charge up to 180 EVs.