By Vicky Read, CEO of ChargeUK – The voice of the EV charging industry

Vicky Read, ChargeUK CEO

Another World EV Day is upon us and despite what the name suggests, the day celebrates more than just electric vehicles. It’s an opportunity to highlight the importance of all parts of the UK’s net-zero transport eco-system – including the UK’s fleets, who have very much led the way in the move to e-mobility – and to check in on progress.

It also gives me the chance to highlight the exponential growth of the UK’s EV charging industry.

In little more than a decade this has grown to support the one million+ electric vehicles on the road today and is now a major player in the green economy.

As a relatively new industry, the charging sector deals with many false narratives and wrongly held anxieties. One of the most common misconceptions about the EV transition is that there is a lack of charging, with this reason often given as proof that the move to EVs is somehow misguided or too difficult.

As the voice of the EV charging industry, we at ChargeUK felt it imperative to tackle this head on. That’s why this summer we commissioned some new analysis with research body New Automotive, as outlined in our white paper – ‘Powering Ahead to 2030’.

One metric that is used to measure whether there is “enough” charging is the number of EV chargers nationwide and how this relates to vehicles on the road. Our study showed that far from there being a lack of charging, as of July 2024 there was almost one charger for every EV, with 930,000 chargers supporting 1.1 million fully electric vehicles.

That’s a figure that includes all forms of EV chargers, be it home, public or workplace. Because the vast majority of drivers use a mix of these networks to charge their vehicles. The number of chargers, plus the variety of places to charge, illustrates the extensive provision available to the today’s EV drivers.

There is, however, more to EV charging than the numbers of sockets. To get a clear picture of provision we also need to know about charging capacity.

Our research found that the network is now capable of delivering 6.87GW, or 165GWh each day. That’s enough to power every EV on the road to drive 580 miles a day; further than the distance between London and Aberdeen.

Given that the average UK car mileage is 21.1 miles/day, that means the network can provide enough power for each EV driver to travel 25 times further than the average daily car journey.

ChargeUK’s members know what matters to fleet operators, and to drivers more generally, is having the right charger in the right place. And we are fully aware that there are some locations where rollout is not progressing as quickly as we’d like.

The UK charging network is now capable of powering every EV on the road to drive 580 miles a day

For example on-street, where delays to government subsidy schemes have held deployment back. We also want to work closely with fleet operators to ensure deployment is meeting specific demands.

But the statistics in ‘Powering Ahead to 2030’ demonstrate that charging is in a good place right now. The sector is also positioned well for tomorrow, with our research showing we are very much in the middle of a public charge point deployment boom. One in three of the UK’s public charge points were installed in the last 12 months, with a new public charge point being installed every 25 minutes.

This boom has led to an average growth in public charge points of 38% a year over the past three years. If this rate continues, the number of charge points is set to double every two years and the UK will exceed 300,000 public charge points by 2030.

So, the industry is doing all it can to be ready for the millions of EVs that will come onto our roads over the next decade, and to allow fleets to continue their role at the vanguard of the transition.

With the right conditions – delivery barriers removed, acceleration of public subsidy schemes, and clarity around the ICE phase-out date and the ZEV mandate – we are in a good place to help UK fleets switch from the pump to the socket.

I look forward to updating you all on this progress at next year’s World EV Day.

To access ChargeUK’s full ‘Powering Ahead to 2030’ white paper, please click here.