What would happen if we all needed to charge our electric vehicles at the same time?
This hypothetical scenario came up in conversation the other day and it got us thinking, what would actually happen? How long would people have to queue for? And where would be the best and worst locations in the UK?
Despite it being a hypothetical scenario, we thought it would be an interesting experiment to use the available data to figure out what would happen, and whether the UK’s current charging infrastructure could handle the sudden influx. But before we unveil our findings, let’s take a look at some of the data.
According to the government’s data on ultra-low-emission vehicles, as of Q1 2023, there are approximately 767,054 licensed BEVs now in the UK. That’s up 57.8% from the same time last year when there were 486,149 examples in Q1 2022. And you can understand why. They’re, for the most part, cheaper to run, you can charge them overnight at home – meaning it’s fully topped up when you head off to work the next day – and they come kitted out in the latest technology. There’s a lot to like about them. However, there is one element of electric driving that causes frustration and worry among drivers, and that is public charging.
By the end of August 2023, the United Kingdom boasted a network of 48,450 electric vehicle charging stations spread across 29,062 different locations, marking a significant 42% growth in the overall count of charging facilities compared to August 2022. And while that’s a positive increase, it’s not matching the growth rate of UK drivers who are switching to EVs.
There are currently 91 EVs per rapid charger in the UK
In addition, from those 48,450 chargers, only around 8,461 are rapid chargers or above, which calculates to around 91 EVs per rapid charger. This means that drivers who need to charge their vehicles on the go are forced to use slow chargers that can take up to 12 hours if you use the Tesla Model Y, for example. This also doesn’t account for the fact that often someone else has their vehicle plugged in when you arrive at the charging station, adding to the wait time.
So, with that knowledge, let’s now investigate the hypothetical scenario posed earlier where everybody needs to charge at the same time. We’ve calculated the wait times for a rapid charger in 363 individual locations across the UK, down to the minute, to discover the 10 best and worst locations when it comes to charging queue times.
By the way, if you’re ever stuck in a queue for an EV charger, why not give our You vs EVs game a try? Can you beat the fastest EVs in the world? Try it, it’s harder than it looks!
Key findings
- The local council area of Windsor and Maidenhead is declared the worst place to charge your vehicle in the UK, due to an EV charging point queue time of up to ten months.
- Na h-Eileanan Siar (the Outer Hebrides) tops the leaderboard for the shortest wait at just seven hours and 35 minutes.
- You’ll wait longer to charge your EV in Leicester and Leeds than you would in London.
Locations with the longest EV charging wait time in the UK
The table below shows the place (determined by the local authority), the total number of EVs and rapid chargers in that location, and how long you’d have to wait if everyone headed to a charger at the same time.
Windsor and Maidenhead top the charge queue charts with a wait of 315 days
In a hypothetical scenario where every EV owner had to take their motor to a charger at the same time, the local authority of Windsor and Maidenhead would have the longest wait time at 315 days. There are a total of 29,599 electric vehicles located here but, astonishingly, only three rapid chargers. The result of that means for every charger in Windsor and Maidenhead, there are 9,866 EVs.
According to the data, the cause of this is routed at the end of 2021, when the number of BEVs in Windsor and Maidenhead increased from 4,725 by the end of Q3 2021 to 11,862 by the start of 2022 – an increase of 151% over the course of a few months.
Biggest cities ranked by EV charger wait time
The table below is laid out the same as the above but instead of local authorities, this table shows the 10 most populous cities in the UK ranked by EV charger wait times.
Leicester and Leeds have longer EV queues than London
According to our calculations, the cities of Leicester and Leeds, despite having around seven million fewer people, would both have longer queue times than the nation’s capital, London.
The reason for London not topping the leaderboard here is that the capital has the highest number of rapid chargers available compared to the others on this list. The data shows that London has around 943 rapid chargers, which is nearly eight and a half times the number in Leeds, and despite having more EVs (84,778), it equates to only 90 EVs per charger. In comparison, Leeds has around 280 EVs per charger thanks to only having 111 rapid chargers split between 31,087 EVs.
As a city home to just over half a million, it’s interesting to discover that only 0.3% of residents in Leicester have a BEV, totalling 1,732 vehicles overall. However, when you discover that the city only has three rapid chargers total, it becomes clear why drivers are hesitating to transition to electric as it currently results in 577 EVs per charger, which is nearly 300 EVs per charger more than Leeds. This means if everyone in Leicester needed to charge up at the same time, it would take nearly 18 and a half days to charge all the cars in the city.
Locations with the shortest EV charging wait time in the UK
The table below shows the best locations in the UK to charge your car, based on EV queue times.
If everyone had to go to a public charger and charge their EV at the same, the place you want to live is Na h-Eileanan Siar (the Outer Hebrides) in Scotland. It currently boasts the best EV rapid charger wait time at just 0.32 days, which converts to around 7 hours and 35 minutes.
Surprisingly, Nottingham, one of the most populous cities in the UK with around 729,977 residents, is the eighth best place in the UK to charge your EV, with a wait time of only 0.63 days (15 hours, 3 minutes).
As you can see from the table above, Nottingham boasts 69 rapid chargers in the city, meaning that there are 19 EVs per charger – a much better return compared to other similar-sized cities, such as Sheffield, which has 57 EVs per charger.
What about the future?
According to the government, the UK’s charging network has been given £1.6 billion under the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Strategy, which aims to deliver 300,000 public electric vehicle charge points by 2030. Whether this could handle our hypothetical scenario is perhaps an idea for an article further down the line. Until then, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Methodology
Leasing Options analysed and compiled data from two government sources, (licensed ultra-low-emission vehicles and electric vehicle charging device statistics) to highlight the number of EVs in all the individual local authorities in the UK as well as the number of EVs in those areas in order to calculate the number of EVs per rapid charger. We then compiled a list of the 10 most popular EVs and found the average charge time at a rapid charger to calculate the wait times for each location. Data sourced September 2023.
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