‘A tax on living greener': how can Britain make charging EVs cheaper?

The Guardian

26-01-2025

Britain's car owners are split into two tribes: the have-drives and the have-nots.
If you have private off-street parking there are very few reasons not to buy an electric car (if you can afford to). The challenge, and one putting a brake on the transition away from polluting fossil fuels, is for motorists who jostle with neighbours to park on the street and access to public EV chargers.
'There is this real thing about driveway privilege,' says Snigdha Tiruvuru, head of partnerships for Char.gy, an on-street charging company.
Cheap home electricity means owners with somewhere to park rarely have to think about charging. They just leave their car plugged in every night (when prices are lowest) and forget about it, like a mobile phone. But for the 9.3m households who do not have their own parking spots, it's trickier.
I am a member of the second group. Testing electric vehicles – from the very large to the very small – is part of my job reporting on the industry, and that means relying on the public charger network. London is streets ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to access and where I live in Lewisham there's a fast-growing network, so it has never been a problem for me.
But with the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to be banned after 2035, the number of chargers around the country will have to keep pace with the big increase in electric car ownership required by the UK's zero-emission vehicle mandate.
Nearly two-thirds of Britons who travel to work go less than 10km each way. Charging even once a week on public chargers would be enough to cover that commute on even the most meagre range.
Given this backdrop, local authorities are under pressure to add to the country's 74,000 public chargers so anybody can go electric.
Using the example of Lewisham, Louise Krupski, its deputy mayor and lead on transport policy, says that putting in charge points is 'a priority', but also 'an incremental process that will go on for a long time'. Most councils have difficult financial choices to make, so are reliant on grant funding, she explains.
I borrowed a well-used but pleasingly nippy Renault Zoe for a fortnight to mimic the experience of owning a secondhand electric car. One of the most frustrating aspects was finding lamp-post chargers blocked from use by a parked petrol car. That is going to stop because the council is going to mark new charger bays as EV-only.
The number of chargers across England could increase rapidly in the next year, as councils are due to receive £381m in funding – albeit two years late – under the government's local electric vehicle infrastructure (Levi) fund.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said the money will 'give EV drivers confidence that they are never too far away from a chargepoint'. Lewisham, for example, will add 250 charge points in 18 months, on top of 211 already installed.
Tiruvuru said the money will 'act as a catalyst for councils and charge point operators. We are on the cusp of getting a lot of these bids through. This isn't just 100 chargers here and there. This is thousands of chargers.'
A critical mass of chargers is also key to eliminating another unfairness – the price advantage enjoyed by the 'have-drives'. The added VAT on non-domestic electricity means people charging on streets are already at a disadvantage and while competition on streets remains limited there is less incentive for operators to cut prices.
Charging app company Zap Map says the slow or fast chargers it tracks cost about 53p per kilowatt hour (kWh), compared with only 8p for off-peak home charging. That can mean people without home chargers end up spending more than a petrol driver to go the same distance.
Former Top Gear presenter Quentin Willson founded campaign group FairCharge in part to address this unfairness. 'The UK won't grow its EV economy without cutting the VAT on public charging or being seen to support EV owners without driveways,' he said.
But for now, in large parts of the country the main problem is simply finding somewhere to plug in. Population density drops outside the capital, so more people have parking. But Victorian terraces with no parking spots exist even in small rural villages. Charging solutions will be needed for almost every one of those homes.
I did not have to drive very far from home before I ran into trouble. The Surrey commuter belt should be prime territory for electric cars, with its relatively wealthy, leafy, car-dominated towns. Yet when I visited family in Weybridge at Christmas, the gaps in the charger map soon became apparent. There are only four public chargers within a 20-minute walk of the town centre, an area with about 20,000 residents.
All are fast chargers, at 22 kilowatts (kW) or higher. That is handy for a quick top-up while shopping, but the faster speed comes at a higher price of 56p per kilowatt hour (a standard car battery might have 60kWh of capacity). There was also a £2 charge for parking, plus the need to battle with yet another parking app.
Not all chargers are created equal
More and more people are buying electric cars, and are having to grapple with charging for the first time. However, not all chargers are created equal, and the profusion of units can cause confusion.
Charging speeds are measured by power output in kilowatts (kW), while battery capacity is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh). For example, a Nissan Leaf has 39kWh of battery capacity, while a Tesla Model Y has 60kWh.
Recharge times vary depending on battery size: divide the battery size by the power to get a very rough idea of how many hours it will take to charge. (E.g., a 60kWh battery at a 22kW charger would take about three hours.) The quicker the charge, the more it tends to cost.
Slow: up to 8kW
Common at homes, on-street chargers and places cars hang around like car parks or hotels. Suitable for charging overnight. Plugging in with a UK three-pin plug to the mains at home will deliver about 2.3kW – although it is not recommended.
Fast: 8kW to 49kW
Found at urban sites like supermarkets, shopping centres or car parks. Capable of charging a smaller battery in a few hours.
Rapid: 50kW to 150kW
Typically found close to big roads for journey charging, but also increasingly found in locations such as supermarkets or gyms with short dwell times. 50kW could give 80% charge in less than an hour.
Ultra-rapid: 150kW and above
Most chargers being installed at motorway services or dedicated charging hubs are now at least 150kW. Many newer cars can now handle 150kW, and several can charge at speeds of over 300kW, adding hundreds of miles of range in around 10 minutes.
Surrey county council, which is responsible for installing on-street chargers, says it is due to start construction at two sites in Weybridge, and is looking at adding more to the 200 public chargers already in the county (population: 1.2 million).
Gaps in the public charger network are frustrating the car industry, even as it is forced by the UK's zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate to sell more electric cars every year.
Going electric is a 'significant societal shift', says Adam Wood, managing director of Renault in the UK. 'This means accelerating the rollout of an accessible, affordable and reliable nationwide charging network for many millions of users.
'The patchwork of different initiatives and solutions needs greater cohesion, awareness and momentum to deliver the progress we need and to give all UK motorists the confidence to switch,' he adds.
Some people are coming up with ways of getting cables from terrace houses across the pavement that do not involve mats or ramps over loose cables – such as the ice-cream van on my road with an extension cable slung from a first-floor window.
Several companies are looking at installing gullies to allow cables to run across pavements. Kerbo Charge, for example, won backing from investor Deborah Meaden on Dragons' Den, the BBC venture capital TV show, for its design that covers the gully with a lid. Kerbo Charge is now live in 25 local authorities across the UK with a further 13 trials confirmed.
Ben Macdonald is behind another competitor: Nodum. Its big idea is a cable that hangs in a lamp-like arch over the pavement and is lowered down by remote control – although it remains to be seen if councils will allow this new street furniture.
Macdonald also hopes for more sharing of home chargers alongside public plugs. Relying on the public charging infrastructure comes at a cost: 'It's a tax on people living with a greener footprint.'