DfT reveals 70% of motorway services now have six rapids
As I provide five outtakes from DfT's appearance in Parliament this week
Hello, I’m Tom Riley, and welcome to The Fast Charge, a British EV newsletter.
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Top story today… on Monday senior EV officials from the Department for Transport were in Parliament and I’ve included my top five outtakes from their appearance below, including that, as of the start of 2025, there are now 80 motorway service areas with at least six rapid chargers - out of 114 - up from about 61 in October 2024.
Elsewhere… Copper theft, President Donald Trump, and the colour grey. Let’s begin!
Five outtakes from DfT’s appearance in Parliament
Background: On Monday afternoon, three of the Department for Transport’s most senior EV officials were up in front of the Public Accounts Committee answering questions about the National Audit Office’s recent report on public charging.
Who was in the dock? There was Jo Shanmugalingam, Second Permanent Secretary; Nick Shaw, Joint Head of the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles; and Richard Bruce CBE, Director of Transport Decarbonisation. The session lasted about two hours.
Below are my top five outtakes…
1. More than two-thirds (70%) of motorway service areas now have at least six rapids...
During the session, officials revealed that, from 1 January, the latest industry data they had showed 80 of the 114 motorway service areas had hit a 2023 ambition to have at least six 50kW+ EV chargers. It’s a big increase (31%) from October 2024 when only 61 service areas were said to have hit DfT’s target. Even in the December 2024 NAO report, it was only suggested about 71 may have hit the ambition - so real speedy progress!
Meanwhile… officials also confirmed, “100 expect to have met the challenge by this summer and all but four by the end of 2026”. They did admit the journey to this point “has been hard” with Richard going so far as to acknowledge a “degree of naiveté” about how long it would take. However, officials still believe that “six was the minimum number of rapid charging hubs that we needed at MSAs to give that confidence to current EV drivers and prospective ones.”
2. ‘Cold spots’…
DfT revealed and used this phrase to describe the areas in the UK that it was closely monitoring for EV charger growth. These spots can be anything from areas where getting a connection - such as in or around national parks - may be more difficult, all the way to areas that may have had little interest from networks to build and install. I have since requested a list of these spots from the department! Stay tuned!
3. Rapid Charging Fund…
Five years after the ambition was first announced, the DfT team were asked several times about what was happening on the £950m Rapid Charging Fund, and the officials admitted there had been more complexity than anticipated - due to issues getting connections. They hoped to have more news shortly. It struck me, based on the other talk during the session about cold spots, that this funding may end up getting saved for areas where the market needs support to install. Perhaps especially given the current Treasury constraints.
4. Making charging accessible…
There was a short - and I mean short - discussion around ensuring EV chargers are accessible for everyone, such as those with disabilities. It was made clear by Jo at DfT that the PAS 1899 guidance they developed with the British Standards Institute and Motability, “is not something we have mandated at the moment; it is a standard we have set out and we will see how the chargepoint industry is able to work with that, or if we need to make further changes.” According to Jo, the standard is currently being reviewed “very quickly”. However, is that right? Based on my report last year, that review process started in June 2024.
5. Is there enough cash?
Officials were asked if the Local EV Infrastructure funding - which has hundreds of millions of pounds for councils to use, though thus far has been slow going - would be enough to hit the government’s ambition to have at least 300,000 chargers. Nick said the department was “confident it is sufficient to deliver more than 100,000 charge points.”
However… Nick added they’d keep monitoring and in two or three years’ time, if they were still seeing cold spots, there is a choice for “future Ministers in spending reviews over any action that is taken”. The reason for the gap (100k versus 300k) is that, according to DfT, right now about three-quarters of public chargers are entirely privately funded. This is exactly why we need that strong ZEV mandate to remain!
*Bonus* And on that mandate…
Here’s what Richard Bruce, DfT’s lead transport decarbonisation official, said when asked about the ongoing ZEV consultation, and whether it will mean a watering down of targets…
Richard: “There are two things about the consultation worth noting. One is that it does reflect some concerns that some car companies have had, but it is very clear that there is no change to the phase-out dates, and there is no change to the trajectory of the mandate, which has these percentages: 22% last year, 28% this year, 80% in 2030, and eventually 100% in 2035. We really, really want to give certainty to both the car industry and the chargepoint industry about the uptake of EVs over time.
“When the mandate was designed, it was after literally years of negotiation with the car industry about what flexibility they needed to achieve it. There is lots of stuff baked into it, and they do not actually have to hit the headline percentage to become compliant and not pay a fine. Different car companies are in different places on their journey towards zero emission vehicles. Some have lots of hybrid technology; some are going to come along with lots and lots of zero emission vehicles in the next few years. The flexibilities reflect that. The question is whether the current suite of flexibilities—borrowing from the future, overachieving on your non-zero emission cars—is still the correct suite of flexibilities, but the headline trajectory will not be changing, because we want to give the certainty.”
Worth bookmarking this!
👉 You can watch the full session here, or the transcript is here.
Other news…
🚙 A new analysis by Transport & Environment has found that all car manufacturers complied with the first year of the ZEV mandate, despite alarmism at the end of 2024 by many. Read more.
🏭 In positive news last week, Nissan and the Japan Automatic Transmission Company (JATCO), secured a £50 million investment deal in partnership with the government to create a new manufacturing plant in Sunderland. The new site will help create 183 new high-value jobs in the region and support over 400 in the wider supply chain. Read more.
📉 In not so good news, charge point operator and installer Pod Point, which is majority owned by EDF, reported it missed a £60m revenue target which it blamed on weak demand for its products due to difficulties in the EV space. While I agree with some of that sentiment, lest us not forget that Pod Point now sits in a hugely competitive space. Whenever I go to EV events, I can’t move for companies similar to them. This won’t be the last time we hear about challenges, failures, and maybe consolidations this year.
🚨 A rise in theft of charging cables - to get the copper out - could be costing the EV industry upwards of £500,000 based on the cost of replacement, repair, and lost income. DeterTech, which operates a national portal on behalf of all police forces in England and Wales, found theft of cables doubled in 2024 - a real problem! Read more.
🔌 On the topic of copper theft, it is increasingly on the minds of charge point operators, and we’ll likely begin to see charger manufacturers and operators install devices that are better protected. Such as this trial by Osprey in UK, or over in the US ChargePoint is introducing cut-resistant cables.
🚘 Last week, Polestar provided a business strategy update which included news about a new compact SUV coming to market, but also launching ‘Polestar Energy’ to make “home charging smarter, more efficient, and cheaper.” Read more.
🚦 The MailOnline has a good summary looking at signage for EV chargers and showing live pricing. See here.
⛳️ Hammersmith and Fulham have launched a fleet of yellow golf buggies to provide an alternative for those making short journeys around the borough. The company behind the idea is Yo-Go. Read more.
📝 This week, Donald Trump became President of the United States. During his inauguration speech, he repeated his commitment to ‘drill, baby, drill’ and also announced the nation would leave behind its EV ambitions - and later it was briefed the country would also be pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Not great.
⁉️ And then… Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla who chose to back Trump, later came on stage at an inauguration celebration event mimicking a Na*i salute. Whatever your view, it’s an utterly strange and surreal thing to see on the world stage. The Financial Times concludes when it comes to Tesla’s investors, if they do start to worry that “Musk could become more associated with white power than clean power”, then Tesla’s valuation has a long way to fall…
🚓 Talking of Musk, one of his customers managed to get a Cybertruck over to the UK. As they are not legal on our roads, it has now been seized by police in Greater Manchester. Read more.
🚲 Elsewhere in Manchester, there was a great piece in The Mill newsletter about bike shops that are becoming ‘F1 style pit stops’ to service the huge number of ebike couriers, especially overnight. I wonder if other cities have similar operations? Read here.
👀 Fancy a new gig? Auto Trader is hiring someone to lead relationships with new entrant brands. Details on LinkedIn here.
😴 Speaking of cars, it seems grey remains the UK’s most popular colour. How dreary and stereotypical of us. Big up the 12,000 people that went with yellow! Read more.
🚽 As the former co-founder of Britain’s most popular ‘SatLav’, I was pleased to see an announcement by Fastned recently that they will be rolling out toilet facilities at their sites in Europe - hopefully we will get some over here in blighty too, and maybe by other operators as well. Read more.
The motorway services charger count is a bit of a moving target. Should we be counting 50kW chargers now, given that the fail the "charge during a McDonalds" test?
On the subject of cable theft, if we assume 5% of charging will eventually come from public DC chargers, the market is 30m x 15/3 x 365 x £0.05 x 0.05, or ~£150m. We are only at 4% of that ultimate potential, so that £0.5m represents about 10% of the industry profits being lost.