Why governments have to take the lead in creating EV recharging infrastructure
The UK government has announced a $2.1 billion budget to increase electric vehicle charging infrastructure from 3,000 to 300,000 across the country.
This ambitious plan aims to make it possible for EV owners to recharge even if they do not have access to charging points on the street, as well as at high speed charging stations on highways. If the government’s plans go ahead, by 2030, when the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles is banned, there will be five times as many charging points in the UK as the total number of petrol pumps. In the United States, the Biden administration intends to invest $7.5 billion to build half a million charging points by 2030.
But the UK government’s plan also reflects an even more important need than the mere existence of such charging points: it also demands a 99% reliability rate for those infrastructures, in order to put an end to unusable or disconnected charging points, obliging them to be fully interoperable from all location-based apps, and immediately accessible by a simple contactless credit cards, ending the nightmare of proprietary apps with absurd onboarding processes that make drivers fill in long and tedious online forms before they can recharge their EVs.
