New analysis of public data by electric vehicle (EV) charging aggregator Bonnet has ranked the 25 best and worst places to charge an EV in the UK.
According to the findings, Coventry is equipped with the most EV chargers per 100,000 people (263 per 100,000, 903 chargers in total, as opposed to Castle Point in Essex, which had the least with only three chargers in total, with a population of 100,000.
The findings have been released after recent government statistics showed there are now 37,055 publicly available EV chargers in the UK.
The ranking is based on the availability of chargepoints per 100,000 people, with other well-equipped areas including Milton Keynes (444 chargers), Brighton and Hove (400 chargers), London (11,521 chargers). These areas all had the most chargers by volume.
Orkney Islands, based on its small population size, was shown to have the second most chargers per capita in the UK (222).
Locations with the fewest number of EV chargers per 100,000 people included Brentwood (seven), Bolton (35), Wigan (39) and Selby (12).
Patrick Reich, CEO and co-founder of Bonnet, said: “This data shows there remains many large and vast charging deserts in the UK.
“As millions more continue to transition into electric cars, we need to see these blown away with new chargers.
“We know from many of the charging operators we work with that this is something that will improve throughout this year.
“It’s not surprising that the best towns to charge at publicly are predominately in the South, where fewer people have off-street parking and rely on public chargers, meanwhile regions in the North and East continue to be less well served by public infrastructure.
“This needs to shift quickly if the UK wants to continue to serve its growing EV population and decarbonise transport.”
Since January last year, Britain’s national EV charging infrastructure has increased by 30%, with 8,680 chargers being installed in 2022.
However, the analysis demonstrates that there is still a significant number of ‘charging deserts’ across the UK.
