Electric vehicle charging

923.  Savings from the lower running costs of electric vehicles are drastically reduced when a household does not have access to home charging. Installing home chargers comes with high upfront costs, though support is available through the Government's EV Chargepoint Grant and is now focusing on rented properties and flats. Not everyone has access to off-road parking; high-income households are 50% more likely to have a garage or off-street parking than lower income households.641 At the start of October 2022, the UK had nearly 35,000 public standard, rapid and ultra-rapid electric vehicle charging devices, with more than 1,200 new rapid chargers and over 5,000 new standard chargers installed during the first nine months of the year.642 With nearly 250,000 new plug-in registrations during the same period, that is just one new standard public charger installed for every 50 new plug-in electric vehicle registrations.643

924.  Prices at typical on-street charge points can be around two to three times higher than home electricity.644 Currently, home chargers command just 5% VAT, while VAT for public chargers is set at 20%. FairCharge have led a call for the government to cut VAT on public chargers, backed by 23 companies.645 The Review recommends that VAT on public and private electric vehicle charging be balanced.

925.  For those dependent on public chargers, accessing them in some areas can be particularly difficult; some regions are 'blackspots', meaning people have to spend more money driving longer distances in order to charge. For example, London has approximately 31% of the UK's chargepoints, while the North East has just 3%.646 Government has published an Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy (EVIS), setting out its expectation for a minimum of 300,000 public chargers to be available by 2030. The Climate Change Committee (CCC) sets out that the government intends to rely primarily on competition to close the price gap between home and public charging, however there is little evidence to date that this is happening. Government should deliver the ambition set out in the EVIS and this should not be left only to private companies to deliver. Government should build on the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure pilot and enhance cooperation with local authorities to enable them to take a leading role in vehicle charging roll-out. A 'broadband style' approach should be taken to ensure that chargers are spread out fairly across the country. We need a complete chargepoint grid and full access to this across the UK.