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This press release has got me confused (thread, apologies). https://www.centrica.com/media-centre/news/2021/driveway-discrimination-just-35-on-street-electric-vehicle-chargers-per-council-to-be-installed-by-2025/
The numbers are so ridiculous in the first instance that it stops me in my tracks. What are they based on? There's no information as to what research actually took place. FOI requests, though. Someone must have been working hard.
An average of 35 chargers per council sounds quite reasonable if the answers just cover council land. Or maybe it's the number of current planning permission requests that've been submitted to build charge points? You'd expect a few new ones between now and 2025...
It's the line in there about there only being 7,682 on-street chargers in the UK that I find baffling – about a third of the 21,195 that Zap-Map says are available. Give or take a few out of service, that's still quite the discrepancy. https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/#points
Being the top flight journalist that I am, I was minded to check with the people who sent the release out, but it seems unfair and vaguely pointless given I won't be writing about it, so I'll just tweet instead.
Of course, back when I was doing PR stuff I'd never have got away with such a vague and specious release. I would've had to explain the research and include all the numbers. I'm still not really sure what the point of it is, other than getting some keyword coverage in.
Incidentally, I'm also struggling to find any information on energy provider and press release composer Centrica's website about how many charge points it's planning to build itself before 2025...
There is this helpful advice from subsidiary firm British Gas's website. 'EV charging stations are popping up all over the UK.'
This all plays into another pet peeve of mine – scaremongering over the 2030 deadline. It's just not necessary, even if it does drive traffic and website comments.
If we had to swap all our cars to electric tomorrow clearly we'd be in trouble, but SMMT's 2019 motor parc (cars on the road) data says there are 237,248 plug-in electrics on the road. Long way to go, but the charging infrastructure will obviously develop. https://media.smmt.co.uk/data/#579-561-wpfd-motorparc
EVs aren't the right fit for everyone right now, but that's changing all the time. I've had an EV as my only car for about 18 months now, and it's meant some lifestyle changes that I've been willing to incorporate, but overall it has worked fine. (Just don't go to France.)
