Blow to electric car owners: Nearly 40 per cent of free charging points are disappearing from UK roads after becoming too expensive to offer for free amid rising energy costs
Electric car owners in the UK will have to pay more to charge as thousands of free charging points disappeared this year due to rising energy costs.
The number of charging points offering free electricity has fallen from 5,715 to 3,568, a drop of almost 40 percent over the past year, figures from the Telegraph.
This is in stark contrast to a year ago, when one in five chargers was free.
According to Zap Map data, there were 42,566 electric vehicle charging points in the UK at the end of April, across 24,909 charging locations.
This is an increase of 37 percent compared to April last year.
The number of charging points offering free electricity has fallen from 5,715 to 3,568. File image
Swapping free charging points to paid charging points is a blow to the government’s goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The government is aiming for all new cars and vans to be completely zero-emissions from 2035, while new cars and vans can be sold between 2030 and 2035 if they are able to travel a significant distance emission-free.
Supermarkets and parking operators have installed free charging points as part of a strategy to encourage electric vehicle ownership, but a spike in energy prices has made them too expensive to operate.
Tesco, which has been supplying charging points to customers since 2019, stopped offering free electricity last November. Instead, motorists must pay 28 pence per kW.
In March this year, the government announced a net-zero strategy to curb carbon emissions and bolster energy security as gas bills are set to rise.
This follows the green tax on the polluting fuel, which is enforced by the government as an environmental tax on the energy bill.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled ‘Powering Up Britain – The Net Zero Growth Plan’, saying the plan is vital to ‘lower energy prices’, ‘grow our economy’ and reduce emissions to zero by 2050 to take.
The proposed update to the government targets means that 22 percent of all cars sold by 2024 should run on batteries instead of petrol or diesel.
42,566 electric vehicle charging points in the UK at the end of April, across 24,909 charging points. File image
Currently, about 17 percent of all new motorcycles entering the parking garage are electric cars.
According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), British car production rose 13.1 percent in February this year to 69,707 units.
While volumes for vehicles are always on the rise, production of battery-powered hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles is soaring in 2023, rising 72.2 percent – accounting for two out of every five cars produced in the month.
And they have predicted that nearly 500,000 new hybrid and electric cars will hit UK roads this year.