There were almost 18,000 public charging points for electric cars by April 2020 compared to just over 8,000 fuel stations in the UK, according to data collected by the Department for Transport (DfT) and the UK Petroleum Industry Association. WhichEV elaborates on the figures.
In recent months, the DfT has been collecting figures to keep track of the number of charging points as the government pushes consumers to move to electric vehicles to reduce emissions.
The number has grown by 402% since 2015, according to Zap-Map. Between 2018 and 2019 alone, the increase was over 60%. A further 1,436 charging devices joined the network in the first three months of 2020, adding another 9%.
Edmund King, president of The Automobile Association, said: “With a 61 per cent year-on-year increase and more public charge points being installed every week, it should give confidence to drivers that they will be able to get home in an electric car.”
Meanwhile, EV charging stations are not distributed equally across the country as not all local authorities have requested funding from the government. The DfT is going to provide £10m to councils in order to install around 7,200 commercial charging points by 2021.
King added: “We believe that further incentives are required to ease the transition to lower emission vehicles such as cutting VAT on the sale of certain vehicles or targeted scrappage schemes.”
At the same time, Grant Shapps, transport secretary, has mentioned that the ban on sales of new diesel, hybrid and petrol vehicles might be brought forward from 2040 to 2032 to facilitate the reduction of emissions and reach the set targets.