(Photo by Zaptec on Unsplash)

EV charging on a neighbours driveway?

Steven Bowen

23 Mar 2024

A recent report from Zenith suggests that only 1 in 7 UK EV drivers use public charge points. The EVXperience Report (EVX2), which polled almost 2,800 of Zenith’s EV customers, also shows that more than two-thirds (69%) primarily rely on charging off-street at home.

The good news is that more than four-fifths (82%) of the people surveyed say they expect the charging infrastructure to improve over the next three years, suggesting “range anxiety” may decrease as the size and quality of the charging network grows.

None of this is new. The latest IEA Global EV Outlook 2023 says that "deployment of public charging infrastructure in anticipation of growth in EV sales is critical for widespread EV adoption". They point to an apparent correlation between the market penetration of EV's, and the ratio of vehicles per charging points.

With the reduction in 'range anxiety' as potential EV drivers learn more about how EV driving fits into their daily driving behaviour, the availability of public changing points, especially for those with no driveway, is becoming more important.

Which is where a service being offered by Just Park and others might have a role to play.

The concept is simple. People (and companies) with EV chargers can make them available for others to hire. As the website says, you "find a charger near you, book it for when you need it and relax knowing that you'll have an EV charger where and when you need it."

👉🏾 https://www.justpark.com/ev?

No one is claiming that this is the silver bullet, but the more options we have, the better.

There is also an argument that as EV uptake increases, the contribution of solar to our electricity generation mix rises, and electricity utilities roll out differentiated pricing, we may see more drivers charging at work. Remember, in many places the marginal cost of solar electricity generation in the middle of the day is very cheap.

So why not incentivise charging then?

Link to blog 👉🏾 https://www.thesustainableinvestor.org.uk/we-need-to-think-differently-about-ev-charging/

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