Source/FinancialTimes, Author: Peter Campbell

Britain's sidewalks have become a battleground in the struggle to transform the country into electric vehicles.

Battery car sales in the UK are gradually exceeding expectations, but there is a lack of sufficient public charging piles to meet the demand.

The British government has allocated more than 1 billion pounds to help promote charging networks. In the next few weeks, the government will release an infrastructure strategy to explain how the UK will meet the growing demand for electric vehicles.

The core issue here is how people will charge their vehicles, and how to solve the two key bottlenecks in the charging network system: one is the highway charging service, and the other is to provide roadside charging for people without private charging piles.

Current status of charging network in the UK

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Mike Horses, CEO of the British Automobile Manufacturers Association, warned: "This is weakening consumers' confidence in switching to electric vehicles. Charging anxiety has now replaced endurance anxiety."

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Britain is currently the world's public New energy vehicle charging pile It is one of the countries with the highest proportion of pure electric vehicles, second only to Japan, China and South Korea. There are about 50000 public charging piles in the UK, which are distributed in streets, shopping malls, highway service areas, gas stations and other places.

It is expected that by 2030, the number of electric vehicles in the UK will surge to 7 million, and the government will gradually stop selling new gasoline and diesel models. However, people in the automotive industry have warned that the promotion of electric vehicles has not kept pace.

According to the data of the Association of Automobile Manufacturers and Traders, the number of electric vehicles will increase fourfold from 2019 to 2021, reaching nearly 400000, but the number of public charging poles will only increase by 70% in the same period.

Mike Hawes, CEO of SMMT (British Automobile Manufacturers Association), warned: "This is weakening consumers' confidence in switching to electric vehicles. Charging anxiety has now replaced endurance anxiety."

How many charging posts are needed?

There are many predictions about how many charging poles the UK will eventually need and where they should be located, which are often quite different. For this reason, the government's infrastructure strategy is not expected to contain specific "goals" - despite industry calls for binding goals.

"The goal will be meaningless," said one person who advised the strategy

There is also a conceptual challenge: experts say that although some charging posts may be rarely used, consumers are only willing to buy electric vehicles after seeing that there are charging posts everywhere.

A person involved in drafting the strategy said: "There are two networks, one is the network people will use, and the other is the network people need to see before taking action, and there is almost no overlap between the two."

Why Slow Charge Point Is Important

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The local government must grant planning permission for each charging pile or allow private companies to dig roads to install cables. Officials agreed that the need for local authority approval is a major obstacle to the nationwide promotion of roadside charging networks.

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If most electric vehicle drivers rely on charging facilities at home, roadside or workplace, millions of "slow" charging piles will be needed to charge the vehicle in a few hours.

People with private driveways can install "off road" charging posts. The government subsidy of 75% of the installation fee will end in March, and the installer is also trying to keep up with the demand. Myenergi opened a 35000 square foot factory in Greensby. To produce its Zappi charger, it has had to increase its production space twice.

"We originally planned to build a 45000 square foot (about 4180 square meters) site, but it has increased to 60000 square feet (about 5570 square meters) before we even completed it," said co-founder Jordan Brompton. "This growth rate exceeded our expectations."

However, 40% of car owners do not have a private driveway and need to use roadside charging piles, which are in short supply.

Installation of roadside charging posts is very complicated. The local government must grant planning permission for each charging pile or allow private companies to dig roads to install cables. Since the municipal government has cut the budget for many years and is unwilling to take precious parking spaces from the owners, the promotion speed is very slow.

There is a way to expand the installation scale of charging piles, that is, to allow "wiring" in the whole street, and install new charging piles when necessary - this is similar to the promotion of cable TV or fiber broadband.

Trojan Company in Aberdeen is specialized in the construction of roadside charging posts. The car owners can use the 1 foot (30.5 cm) long charging head they carry in their cars to insert it. This avoids the need for dedicated charging positions, which occupy the parking space of non electric vehicle owners. In March, the company will carry out a pilot promotion of 150 charging piles in Brent and Camden, London, but the installation of charging piles still requires local planning permission.

Ian Mackenzie, CEO of Trojan, said: "Everyone knows this problem, and we are all trying to make things easier. If I can choose one thing to solve, it is planning restrictions."

Officials agreed that the need for local authority approval is a major obstacle to the nationwide promotion of roadside charging networks. Members of Congress also highlighted this issue in a report in 2018.

Fast charging pile faces challenges

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The lack of competition among the providers of expressway service operators has also hindered the promotion of high-speed charging networks.

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If the roadside charging network cannot be expanded, fast charging piles located in some gas stations or shopping centers will become more important. For long-distance travel of electric vehicle drivers, it is also crucial to provide fast charging piles.

According to BP's estimate, the number of vehicles that a fast charging pile can meet is the same as 60 slow charging piles. However, some places will need new grid connections to support the demand for high power charging. If these charging piles are far away from the high-speed transmission system of the grid, it may cost millions of pounds.

A government official said, "The big problem is that you can't move the expressway service area."

Lack of competition among providers of expressway service operators also hinders high-speed charging New energy vehicle maintenance