There are MORE Electric car charging points than petrol stations in the UK

The number of public charging points for electric cars in the UK now exceeds the number of filling stations for petrol and diesel.

If you’re a bit long in the tooth, you’ll remember when the UK was full of little petrol stations in every village, with an old codger slowly meandering out to fill your car with petrol. But times have changed.

Since 1970 – when there were pushing on 40,000 petrol stations in the UK – the number has declined rapidly, and now there are just 8,396 left, and in some areas it’s a real struggle to find somewhere to fill up; there are just four inside London’s congestion charging zone, for example.

But as petrol stations decline, the rise and rise of charging stations for electric cars continues, and we’ve now got to the point where there are more public EV charging stations than petrol stations – 9,199 EV stations compared to 8,396 petrol stations.

Admittedly many of those will take three winters to charge a big battery EV, but around 1,600 are ‘Rapid’ charge stations where you can expect at least a 50kW charge rate (assuming they’re actually working).

Kalyana Sivagnanam, Nissan UK MD, said:

We’ve moved beyond the early concerns of range anxiety with EVs now exceeding the vast majority of customer’s daily driving needs. The next challenge is for charging infrastructure to keep pace with the number of EVs on the road, and that the experience of recharging is as enjoyable and effortless as that of all-electric driving.

There are still plenty of reasons to hold off buying an electric car, but we are getting to the point where, as long as you have a spare half an hour, ‘refuelling’ your EV isn’t the drama it was a few years ago.