EV charging ‘deserts’ a barrier to electric car adoption
Tue, 03 Sept 2024
Three quarters of households that don’t have off-street parking also don’t have a public charger within a five-minute walk, new data has revealed.
Overall, 9.3 million of the 28.4 million households in the UK do not have off-street parking and, therefore, the ability to install a wall box charger at their house.
They are instead reliant on public chargers and analysis from Field Dynamics has exposed the serious flaws in the network.
While the overall number of public chargers is increasing rapidly, with 46% more being added in the previous year alone, large areas known as "charging deserts" are beginning to emerge, where motorists are inadequately served by the public network.
The worst offenders are north-east Derbyshire and Redditch, the analysis published in the Guardian has revealed. In north-east Derbyshire, the public charger network covers a paltry 1.3% of ‘on-street’ households. In Redditch, it is 3.2% – compared to 99% coverage in Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea.
Overall, London has four times more chargers per household than the rest of the UK.
The gap between coverage in London and the rest of Great Britain is also growing – from a 32% difference in public chargepoint availability in 2020, to a 47% difference this year.
The data shows that in a whopping 38 local authorities across the UK, less than 10% of households have parking covered by the public charger network.
Field Dynamics MD Craig Stephenson said the large divide between those who can charge at home and those reliant on the public network chips away at the money-saving aspects of EVs, particularly if motorists have to rely on pricier rapid chargers further away from their home.
