Infrastructure is everywhere

Mark Moran looks how the private sector can complement public sector investment in EV charging infrastructure

The UK is now home to an increasingly deep network of public chargepoints provided in car parks, at park & ride sites and rail stations, on motorways, in supermarkets and along the kerbside.

According to the Zap-Map website, at the end of June 2022 there were 32,663 charging points spread across 19,960 charging locations. This represents a 34% increase in the number of charging devices since June 2021. In May, 829 new charging devices were added to the Zap-Map database.

Government investment in the rolling out of charging infrastructure so far runs to an estimated £1.5bn. Looking forward, there is a need to ensure that public EV charging is a genuine national network in which currently underserved regions and communities are catered for. This means rural and marginal locations, which are possibly less attractive to commercial chargepoint providers, become areas where public funding will become especially important in future.

However, there are positive signs that the private sector is increasingly willing to underwrite the provision of chargepoints and creation of charging hubs. But there are other ways in which companies can help fill in the gaps. For example, the Zap-Map figures do not include the many chargepoints installed at home or at workplace locations, which are estimated to be more than 400,000. Hopefully more of these chargepoints can be available to the public via community charging services.

Mark Moran is editor of EVolution Magazine