UK risks leaving its EV drivers out of juice, unless it installs chargers 5 times faster

The UK is passing milestones and installing new EV chargers every week. But according to a UK think tank, it’s not doing so anywhere near fast enough.

As reported in the Telegraph earlier today, Policy Exchange says the UK needs to up its install rate of 7,000 chargers a year to 35,000 over the next decade if it’s to meet charging demands.

In other words, it needs to install EV chargers at five times the rate it’s doing now, otherwise it will not be able to service EV driver’s demands in the next 10 years.

[Read: How much does it cost to buy, own, and run an EV? It’s not as much as you think]

The think tank says the UK will need at least 400,000 public EV chargers by 2030. At the time of writing, the country has just short of 38,000 connectors attached to just under 22,000 devices.

In 2030, the UK intends to ban the sale of new combustion engine vehicles, and when that happens charging infrastructure is going to come under immense demand. At the moment its only equipped to support a niche of early adopters, not an entire nation of zero emission vehicles.

Unless the UK pulls its finger out, EV drivers could be left facing charging challenges in the future.