EV Charging Points Are Being Made Compulsory At Thousands Of Fuel Stations

That escalated quickly! Barely a few hours after Shell announced its first EV charging points at petrol stations, the UK government has unveiled plans to make them compulsory at all large fuel forecourts and motorway service stations.

Transport Minister John Hayes has announced the Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill, which includes instructions that ‘multiple charging points’ should be installed at all such sites. It should double the current charging infrastructure, estimates say, and place charging points at locations that people already know and associate with refuelling.

What constitutes a ‘larger’ filling station is still unclear, and we expect more details on that in due course. That said, it will probably be sensible for all forecourts, large or small, to have at least a couple of charging points.

There’s still no mention of the time and space issue, whereby a handful of charging points won’t be enough to serve demand if every car has to sit there for half an hour or more. We expect the government to say it won’t be a problem because most people should recharge at home. How true that will turn out to be… well, we’ll see.

As part of the Bill’s general drive towards electric motoring, charging points will be installed on the street, addressing the obvious problem of at-home charging where houses don’t have a driveway. Streetlamp-based chargers are reportedly the most likely solution, because they are already wired into the national grid and roadworks disruption would be minimal.

A separate clause in the Bill states that insurance companies will be liable when properly insured autonomous cars have an accident or cause damage. If the car isn’t insured, the driver is liable. Manufacturers everywhere will be breathing a sigh of relief, because they seem to escape responsibility altogether – unless the crash can be proven to have been caused by production errors.