1:47 pm, June 8, 2023
The government has admitted that the gap between the number of EVs and how many chargepoints there are will carry on for months or more.
Transport minister Jesse Norman blamed the ‘disconnect’ between vehicles and infrastructure on ‘rapidly growing’ EV purchases.
However, he maintained to MPs that the government had plans to support expansion, potentially using billions in private investment cash.
He told them that at the moment there were more than 42,000 public chargepoints in the UK on top of hundreds of thousands in homes and workplaces.
‘The government allocated a share of £381m to every local area in England under the Levi – Local EV Infrastructure fund –and is also supporting rapid chargers along the strategic road network,’ he said.
He added that the government provided grants to develop chargepoints in flats, rental properties, residential car parks and workplaces as well.
However, Labour MP Matt Western said: ‘According to The Times, it seems the gulf between the number of electric vehicles out on our roads and the number of public chargepoints has actually doubled in the last year.
‘And Logistics UK is reporting that many of their operators with commercial vehicles cannot access these points.
‘So it seems the government needs to do more in terms of planning and to encourage investment. Could the minister update us?’
In his reply, Norman said: ‘I take the general point he raises.
‘Of course, when you have rapidly growing EV purchases, as we do in this country, you are going to see moments where the amount of infrastructure and the amount of vehicles disconnect a little bit and we’ve certainly seen a bit of that recently – and we will do perhaps for a number of months or more yet.
‘But what is so interesting is the new zero emissions vehicle mandate allows us to trigger, as I’ve already mentioned, billions of pounds of potential private investment.
‘That’s a world-leading intervention by government and I think it will pay long-term dividends in supporting the expansion of the electric car fleet.’
According to The Times, industry figures showed there were 36 electric cars on UK roads for every standard public charger last year versus 31 at the end of 2021.
However, yesterday the AA reported that the proportion of EV breakdowns caused by running out of charge had fallen by 70 per cent since 2019.
It said that over the year to date, it had dealt with 39,109 EV breakdowns, and just 2.1 per cent of callouts came from stranded EV drivers with depleted batteries during the first five months of this year.
That was down from eight per cent across the whole of 2019.
The AA partly attributed it to a spike in the number of public charging devices, with Zapmap figures showing the total had risen from 24,909 at the end of April 2022 to 42,566 a year later.
