Compiled / Zhu Lin
Editor/ Qian Yaguang
Design / Zhao Haoran
Source/FinancialTimes, by Peter Campbell
Britain's sidewalks have become a battleground in the fight to convert the country to electric vehicles.
Battery car sales in the UK are gradually beating expectations, but there is a lack of enough public charging piles to meet demand.
The UK government has allocated more than £1 billion to help drive the rollout of charging networks. In the coming weeks, the government will release an infrastructure strategy that sets out how the UK will meet the growing demand from electric vehicle owners.
The central question here is how people will charge their vehicles and how to address two key bottlenecks in the charging network system: highway charging services and curbside charging for people who don't have private charging piles.
Current state of charging networks in the UK
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Mike Hoth, chief executive of the British Association of Automakers, warned: "This is undermining consumer confidence in switching to electric vehicles, with charging anxiety now replacing battery life anxiety. ”
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The UK currently has one of the highest ratios of public charging piles to pure electric vehicles in the world, after Japan, China and South Korea. There are around 50,000 public charging piles in the UK, spread over other places such as streets, shopping centres, motorway service areas and gas stations.
The number of electric vehicles in the UK is expected to surge to 7 million by 2030, when the government will phase out sales of new petrol and diesel models. But auto industry insiders have warned that the promotion of electric vehicles has not kept pace.
According to the Association of Automakers and Traders, the number of electric vehicles increased fourfold between 2019 and 2021 to nearly 400,000, but the number of public charging piles increased by only 70% over the same period.
Mike Hawes, chief executive of SMMT (British Automobile Manufacturers Association), warned: "This is undermining consumer confidence in switching to electric vehicles, with charging anxiety now replacing battery life anxiety. ”
How many charging piles do I need?
There are many predictions about how many charging piles the UK will eventually need and where they should be located, and these predictions tend to be very different. For this reason, the government's infrastructure strategy is not expected to contain specific "targets" – despite calls from the industry for binding targets.
One person advising on the strategy said: "The goal will be meaningless. ”
There's also a conceptual challenge: Experts say that while some charging piles may rarely be used, consumers are only willing to buy electric cars after seeing that there are charging piles everywhere.
"There are two networks here, one that people are going to use and one that people need to see before they act, and there's little overlap between the two," said one person involved in drafting the strategy. ”
Why slow charging piles are important
Local governments must grant planning permission for each charging pile, or allow private companies to dig roads to install cables. Officials agreed that the need for approval from local authorities is the biggest obstacle to rolling out roadside charging networks nationwide.
If the vast majority of EV drivers rely on charging facilities at home, on the side of the road, or in the workplace, millions of "slow" charging piles will be needed to charge their cars in hours.
Anyone with a private driveway can install "off-road" charging piles. The government subsidy, which provides a 75% installation fee, will end in March, and installers are trying to keep up with demand. Myenergi opened a 35,000-square-foot (3,250-square-meter) facility in Greensby. To produce its Zappi charger, it has had to increase its production space twice.
"We were going to build a 45,000-square-foot site, but we increased it to 60,000 square feet (about 5,570 square meters) before we even finished it." Co-founder Jordan Brompton said. "This growth rate has exceeded our expectations."
However, 40% of car owners do not have a private lane, they need to use roadside charging piles, and roadside charging piles are already in short supply.
Installing curbside charging piles is complicated. Local governments must grant planning permission for each charging pile, or allow private companies to dig roads to install cables. Because the city government has cut its budget for years and is reluctant to take valuable parking space from car owners, the pace of promotion has been slow.
One way to scale up charging pile installations is to allow "wiring" throughout the street, installing new charging piles when needed – similar to the promotion of cable TV or fiber optic broadband.
Aberdeen-based Trojan specializes in the construction of curbside charging piles, which owners can plug in with the 1-foot (30.5 cm) long charging head they carry on their vehicles. This avoids the need for dedicated charging slots, which take up parking space for non-electric vehicle owners. The company will pilot 150 charging piles in London's Brent and Camden districts in March, but local planning permission will still be required to install them.
Ian Mackenzie, CEO of Trojan, said: "Everyone knows about the problem and we're all looking for ways to make things easier. If there's one thing I can choose to work around, it's planning limitations. ”
Officials agreed that the need for approval from local authorities was the biggest obstacle to rolling out roadside charging networks nationwide, an issue that lawmakers highlighted in a 2018 report.
Fast charging piles face challenges
The lack of competition among suppliers of highway service operators has also hindered the spread of high-speed charging networks.
If the curbside charging network cannot be expanded, fast charging piles located at some gas stations or shopping malls will become even more important. For the long journey of electric vehicle drivers, it is also crucial to provide fast charging piles.
According to BP estimates, one fast charging pile can meet the same number of vehicles as 60 slow charging piles. However, some places will require new grid connections to support the need for high-power charging. If these charging piles were moved away from the grid's high-speed transmission system, it could cost millions of pounds.
A government official said: "The biggest problem is that you can't move the highway service area. ”
The lack of competition among suppliers of highway service operators has also hindered the spread of high-speed charging networks. The Electric Highway Company has had exclusive rights to operate charging piles in ukh highway service areas over the past decade, but has not invested in its equipment.
Gridserve, backed by Hitachi, acquired the company's network in 2021 and is modernizing it. According to the current regulations, there must be 6 fast charging piles in each service area by 2023. In 2022 alone, Gridserve plans to build 30 high-speed charging centers.
The government's strategy may require longer-term planning, even if it means allowing companies to operate for longer to recoup their investments. "The question is, do you reduce monopoly risk in order to get infrastructure." A person who advises on the strategy said.
How long it takes to build capacity
The UK automotive industry predicts that by 2030, one in every 5 cars on the road will be purely electric (around 7 million in total). SMMT predicted in 2021 that 2.3 million chargers would be needed to meet this anticipated demand.
Even though the final number will be much less, as electric car sales increase year by year, the change of the grid needs to start now.
But officials acknowledge that in order for the use of electric vehicles to continue to grow, especially among car owners without private lanes, the process of building charging infrastructure needs to be much faster.
"It's not going to be easy," said one person involved in designing the strategy, "it's going to be a strain, and there's going to be some run-in problems." But this does not negate the benefits of the technology. ”