The UK has surpassed 50,000 electric vehicle (EV) charging points, according to chargepoint mapping service Zapmap.
The country’s 50,000th charging device to be installed is an ultra-rapid device at a service station in Weston-super-Mare.
The 40,000th EV charger was installed in February 2023, meaning the speed at which the UK is now deploying EV charging infrastructure has significantly increased. In contrast, a full year passed for the previous 10,000 chargers to be installed (February 2022 to February 2023).
The news has been celebrated as a huge milestone in the country’s target of installing 300,000 chargepoints by 2030.
“Hitting 50,000 public charging devices is a really important milestone for the country and illustrates the sea change behind the increased rate of chargepoint installations,” said Melanie Shufflebotham, chief operating officer at Zapmap. “Having passed 40,000 chargepoints in February, our predictions are that there will be 100,000 chargers by August 2025 – which would certainly be a major achievement.
“Alongside the number of high-power charging hubs in the UK more than doubling in the past year, as we saw last week, these are changes that bring real benefits to electric car drivers up and down the country.”
Zapmap’s recent report also found that the number of ultra-rapid chargepoints in the UK has increased by 68 per cent since September 2022. Based on this trend, the UK is currently on track to have 100,000 charging devices by August 2025.
Ian Johnson, chair of the UK charging association ChargeUK, said: “The rate of deployment is increasing all the time. In the last 12 months alone, the public chargepoint network has increased by 43 per cent. However, we can go further and faster with the right policies and help from the government to remove barriers that constrain the roll-out.
“Public chargers are part of a wider picture. The way people charge their EV depends on their lifestyle – many people charge at home, others charge on their street, while many will either charge at destinations or en route on their journeys. Our members are focused on ensuring drivers have access to the right charger in the right place.”
James Court, CEO at EVA England, added: “Lack of charging, both real and perceived, is the biggest issue holding back EVs, and hopefully we will see the blockers in planning and grid removed so that milestones happen more frequently in the future.”
The UK installed its 30,000th chargepoint in February 2022, with a BP Pulse device installed in Botany Bay in Kent. It followed the 20,000th charger – a Pod Point charger – being deployed in September 2020 at a Tesco in Scarborough. The 10,000 charging devices milestone came in August 2018, with the installation of an InstaVolt device at Meadowfield Filling Station.
There are currently fewer than 43,000 public chargepoints in the whole of the UK. A study from 2021 found that the installation of chargers needs to increase by five times the current rate to replace petrol cars by the end of the decade.
However, within the past month, the UK has gone back on its pledge of banning the sale of petrol cars by 2030.
In September, the UK’s largest EV charging hub opened in Birmingham.
