EV Charging Hubs

Convenient and affordable charging infrastructure is crucial in our desired switch to electric vehicles usage. Both national and local government have an important role to play in facilitating access across the nation.

The UK Government’s ambition is to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040. Based on this ambition, current forecasts confirm that by 2030 there could be 8-11 million hybrid or electric cars on the UK’s roads and over 25 million hybrid or electric cars by 2040. To compare, there were 31.2 million cars in the UK in 2017.

EV drivers primarily require both convenient and smart (contactless payment) charging facilities: we also know that approximately one third of UK households do not have a driveway or garage restricting home charging facilities, and drivers will also want to ‘top-up’ their battery while away from home on leisure or business journeys.

Currently, significant funds disbursed to Local authorities help meet this (predicted) growing need from residents and local businesses by installing grant-funded charge points, in areas usually restricted to Local Authority sites, on bypasses or council unused land. These charging sites stand mostly in stark relief to site locations, out of place, and for most with low numbers of electric vehicles in sight. The model chosen has been to replicate traditional filling stations, with a charging station model. This completely removes the most important advantage of electric vehicle mobility – charging flexibility, and critically, EV charging convenience.

Our daily lives are grounded in consumerism, based on ever higher levels of convenience, whether Amazon Prime or Deliveroo or UBER, whatever choices we make we generally love the convenience aspect on which our purchasing decisions are made, we see real value in this time saving feature.

But strangely when choices, through large investments, are made available for EV charging, we apparently see no value in the key aspect that drives our decisions in all other facets of our lives, a convenience factor.

Additionally our work/life balance has been rapidly adjusting to life after COVID-19, as a result of the tangible benefits seen of homeworking; managing our lives more effectively than as a population we adjusted to the term “commuter”. In this context both renewable energy infrastructure as well as EV charging should be focused directly on customers’ needs not local Authorities limited decision making processes.

EV charging only makes real sense when you maximise the benefits of owning an electric vehicle by providing options to charge when and where convenient; at home, office, leisure, at the Mall, Garden Centre, how and where you live your life EV charging needs to be available to support your lifestyle, principally because it can.

We need to think local, act national if we are truly serious about electric vehicles forming part of a nation’s transportation strategy, and forget simply replacing current fuel pump configurations with replica EV charging configuration as a primary energy supply means to our communities.

It’s the wrong path, at the wrong time.