Latest figures reveal twice as many electric car charging points as electric cars!

Probably not any surprise to a lot of people who see the electric charging points lying empty. But latest government figures show there are now 57,567 charging points compared to around 24,500 electric cars. So even with my basic maths I make that just over two charging points for each electric car – no wonder there aren’t any queues!

What’s bound to infuriate petrolheads even more is that this equates to six times more charging points than petrol stations. Not only that, but the electric charging points have been paid for with public money. In 2013 the Government unveiled a £37m grant package to build the charging stations, with local councils forking out even more money to install the points. The grant was part of a £400m commitment towards encouraging the take-up of electric vehicles.

“This investment underlines the Government’s commitment to making sure that the UK is a world leader in the electric car industry,” Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said at the time. But unless people start buying electric cars then the creation of this massive charging network could turn out to be the biggest transport flop since the Sinclair C5

At the end of 2014 the Nissan Leaf was revealed as the UK’s top selling electric car with a total of 6,838 sales. In second spot was the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV with 5,273 sales and in third was the BMW i3 with sales of just 1,534.