New law to make the electric vehicle charging network 99% reliable Car News

The UK’s electric vehicle fast-charging network will have to have a 99% reliability rating under new laws coming later this year.

This, ministers hope, will eliminate range anxiety and create a “world-class” charging network. The legislation also includes a £1.6billion investment in 300,000 new charging points across the country, which it says would be five times as many traditional fuel pumps currently in use. These will be operational by 2030 and distributed throughout the country, he promises.

A spokesperson for the Department for Transport (DfT) told Autocar: “We have committed £1.6 billion to support the rollout of charging stations across the UK and, as part of our strategy to recently released EV infrastructure, we will establish new legal requirements to improve reliability. at public charging stations.

They added that the accessibility of charging stations is also a priority: “We have recently consulted to ensure charging stations are designed inclusively and will publish our response later this year.”

Yesterday it was revealed that the number of public EV chargers in the UK has increased by 33%, with 30,290 currently in use. The data, from mapping provider Zap Map and released by the DfT, showed around 7,500 new devices were installed over the past year – 1,915 in the past three months alone.

Broken down, the figures show that London has the most chargers, with 111 per 100,000 people. The least in the UK was found to be the whole country of Northern Ireland, which has just 18 per 100,000. On average in the UK there are 45 public chargers per 100,000 people .

It also found what percentage of them were fast chargers, with Scotland recording 13.6 per 100,000 and Northern Ireland just 1.3. At a more local level, the North West of England has 5.9 per 100,000, while the North East has 9.4.

EV adoption is set to continue to grow exponentially as a ban on ICE new car sales in 2030 looms, and figures show the government, as well as charging station companies, are responding to this : at this point in 2015, there were only about 2,000 devices in operation, rising to 10,000 in 2018.