A recent report by Madeleine Cuff of the "I" newspaper — Twitter @theipaper has revealed that there are not enough Electric Vehicle charging points in the UK to keep up with the large increase in electric car sales. As a result, waiting times at some of the UK's most used charging points are starting to quickly show the urgent need for a fast roll out of more charging points. Sales of EVs has risen sharply in the UK, but charging point installations have been much slower off the mark, leading to an EV car Vs Charging point disparity, as well as frustration for a lot of EV drivers.
An EV charging point in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, UK.
Within the first seven months of 2022, there was a little under 128,000 new Electric Vehicles driving on UK streets. That's an increase of 50% compared to the previous year. Tally that with the amount of new charging points that were added in the same first seven months of 2022, which was approximately 4800, and you can see there is a huge imbalance.
According to Ginny Buckley [Electrifying.com], there are more charging points in Westminster alone than in the West Midlands. Spending a lot of time in the West Midlands myself and knowing it well, I find that very hard to believe because the West Midlands is huge compared to Westminster.
However, I'm sure Ginny has done the research and has all the data, so there is no reason to doubt the findings. But this is so disproportionate [that's a land comparison of 21.47 Km² for Westminster Vs 902 Km² for the West Midlands], that unless everyone in Westminster drives an EV, and that number is much higher than the amount of people who own EVs in all of the West Midlands combined [very unlikely], it does seem like there is some favouritism for certain locations going on here.
All in all, It's the drivers of EVs who are the losers. They switch to Electric Autos thinking the grass is greener and they are doing there bit for the environment, but all they get in return is a longer wait time at the plugs than they would have gotten at the petrol / diesel pumps. Also worth thinking about. With energy prices rising, how long will it be before many of the free charging points around the UK are no longer free.
1 comments:
electric cars leave drivers vulnerable and needy. What happens if an electric car runs out of power? It will stop and not move. If a petrol or diesel car is out of juice all that is needed is to get the jerry can out the boot and walk to the nearest petrol station. With an EV the driver is basically stranded. The only way to get the car mobile again is to call for roadside assistance or a towing company to take the car to a charging port.
What a waste of resources and money this is. Calling for a tow, AA or RAC because the car ran out of electric. What if the driver doesn't have roadside cover. Makers of EVs need to address this straight away. Install a backup battery maybe.
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