The Secret Surge of Electric Vehicles

In 2011, just 7 years ago, there were less than 1,500 electric vehicle (EV) charging points. The
overwhelming majority of those were considered ‘slow’ points. 3KW points that required 7-8 hours to fully charge a vehicle.

In 2018, the number of ‘slow’ points is now almost double that figure, sitting somewhere just below 3,000. The total number of EV points, including ‘fast’ and ‘rapid AC’ / ‘rapid DC’ has rocketed to approximately 16,500 points. That’s well over 10 times more. More to the point, the majority of these are now much faster, able to charge an EV in 3 hours. Some are even capable of sub-hour charging.

There are currently around 182,000 electric cars on the road today, which includes hybrids. So for every 11 electric cars, there’s around 1 point available.

Compare this to petrol. There are around 8,455 gas stations in the UK today, which supply around 31 million cars. That’s a ratio of around 3,650 fuel cars for every 1 station.

So let’s look at what these figures mean in practice.

Refuelling a fuel-based car is a short process. Park up. Fuel in. Pay. Leave. It’s a 5 to 10 minute process, give or take the time it takes to peruse the snacks and drinks. This is half of the reason why that huge 3650:1 ratio is possible. Vehicles never occupy the fuel source for very long.

EV charging is much more time-hungry as processes go. As we saw earlier, slow points are designed for over-night or all-day charging. But these points are no longer indicative of charging points in general. An average of 3 hours charge time is now much more accurate. Several people can now charge from a single point in a day.

The other half of the comparison is “how often does it need to happen?”

For fuel-based cars, you can expect to be refuelling anywhere between twice a week to once a fortnight. Most people rarely fill a tank to its capacity, so there’s a little-and-often flow of traffic through stations. So the time it takes to fuel up, and the low frequency of fuelling up makes the 3650:1 ratio very easy to handle.

How does EV charging compare? Using a hybrid as an example wouldn’t be particularly useful here. They require less charging, and still require fuel. So instead, we’ll use the UK’s most popular 100% EV as a reference point: the Nissan Leaf. It has a 40kWh capacity battery, advertised with a range of 168 miles. On average, people drive around 30 miles per day. So it’s feasible that full charging would only be required between every 3 to 5 days. The charge time and frequency combined makes a 10:1 ratio fairly similar to traditional refuelling.

More charging points are absolutely necessary for the future, however. Many more.

It’s estimated that by 2020, there will be around 1 million EVs in use. To maintain the same stable 10:1 ratio, we need 100,000 charging points – that’s around 80,000 more in just 2 years.

Thankfully, there are a multitude of companies that see this problem as an opportunity.

Charging points don’t need to be centralised. Fuel stations are centralised out of necessity. The more fuel you have in one place, the more efficient that station becomes, of course. But the electrical grid is accessible in practically every place that there are people. So charging points can be anywhere. They can be distributed across cities, towns, and villages evenly.

For more on this, read our article on Why EV Charging is a Blessing, Not a Problem.