Less than a quarter of public rapid EV chargers fully working, claims survey
A project that allows three times as many electric vehicles (EVs) to be charged simultaneously has shared results from a survey which show less than a quarter of public rapid chargers are fully working.
Some of the key findings from the survey, which a total of 996 EV and non-EV drivers responded to, include:
• 82% of respondents charge most often at home, and 8% at work
• 85% of people want to pay for public charging by contactless debit or credit card payment or automatic payment on plug in; only 10% want to pay by smartphone app; and less than 5% want to pay by RFID card or tag.
• Only 22.75% of respondents said that public rapid chargers always worked.
• Asked about the accessibility of (non-rapid) workplace chargers, over 42% of respondents said that they occasionally or often had to queue or to give up, or could rarely find an available charger.
• In reply to the question ‘Why did you buy an electric vehicle?’, ‘reducing environmental impact’ was the top response, closely followed by ‘low running costs’.
The survey was conducted by NetX which has developed a three-socket charger that can extend an existing single charge point, enabling users to share the capacity of a standard 7kW fast charger with up to three vehicles.
NetX project partners are DriveElectric (survey and data collection), EB Charging (installation and charger management, and project lead partner), Hangar19 (charger design, production and charging back-office management) and the Smart Mobility Unit at the University of Hertfordshire (research partner).
Other project partners include Brighton & Hove City Council, Southend on Sea Borough Council, Watford Borough Council and Hodos Media.
The NetX charger technology is being tested as part of the Innovate UK supported ‘Electric Vehicle Network Extender (NetX) Field Trial’. The NetX project ends in November 2021.
For a copy of the final report from the NetX EV charging survey, which will be available later this year, you can register at this link: https://www.drive-electric.co.
