The UK has more electric vehicles than petrol stations, Australia has “range anxiety”

Electric vehicle charging areas now outnumber petrol stations in the United Kingdom by hundreds, a report by Nissan has found. At last count, there were 8396 petrol stations in the UK, versus 9199 EV charging sites.

It should be noted that even bays with a single EV charging outlet counted on the car dealer’s talley, so this 803 lead may wither if we went nozzle to plug.

However, the number of charging areas have proliferated quickly throughout the isles, according to dedicated car news outlet Car Advice.

“Just 919 were present at the end of 2012, and 2530 have been added in the first seven months of this year,” Car Advice reported.

Many of these new outlets are also deemed “fast chargers” meaning they can fill 80 per cent of a car’s electric tank in around half an hour, as opposed to the few hours taken by older chargers.

NRMA executive general manager of motoring Nell Payne said the aim of the project is to connect motorists from Sydney to the south cost so they are always within 150 kilometres of an NRMA charging station.

“We know one of the key reason electric vehicle uptake has been relatively slow in Australia so far is because of ‘range anxiety’,” she said, “so we’re building this extensive network of chargers to safeguard against that happening.”