Regardless of how you consider electric vehicles as a public policy choice, work by the IPCC and the Committee on Climate Change agree: electrification of the vehicle fleet is essential to help the UK achieve its climate goals. In fact, it is an essential part of public policy that we do this. The priority is another debate.

Over the last 10 years, it has been government policy in the UK to support the roll out of electric vehicle charging across the UK. Millions of pounds have been invested in subsidies to roll out electric vehicle charging points. But range anxiety is still a big barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles. So how much of this is just a perception, and how much is based in reality?

Fortunately, we are able to tell with some degree of certainty not only whether this is an issue, but also how prevelant it is within UK cities and in different areas. The Department for Transport keeps detailed statistics of charge point locations in the National Chargepoint Registry, with some data going back as far as 2012. It publishes loads of useful statistics online, and using this data, we can quite how accessible chargepoints now are across the UK.

We can use these tools, plus QGIS, to see how EV charging points have proliferated in the West Midlands – the traditional automotive manufacturing heartland of England – since 2020. As you can expect, in 2020 numbers were relatively sparse across much of the West Midlands. With Coventry and Stratford-upon-Avon being the notable exceptions where charging points are above 50.6 devices per 100k population.

Just a year later, the higher concentrations of charging points is starting to surround the major conurbations. Solihull and Penkridge start to increase in concentration, while from Bromsgrove to Eyensham concentrations start to increase as well.

Fast-fowarding to January 2022, and these concentrations really start to become very obvious. And where it is obviously low? The main conurbation: Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Sutton Coldfield, and Stourbridge. All noticably low compared to the surrounding areas.

Why is that? Higher public transport usage, a good solid network of alternative modes, and the sheer scale of the population make a high density of chargers hard to achieve based on pure numbers alone are all reasonable explanations. The main conurbation has also gone in hard on active travel, although thats quite recent in policy terms.

Who knows why this growth in charging points outside of the urban areas is most notable. But it does go to show one thing. The evidence is indicating that increasingly, you are not going to be far from a charger. So, just maybe, its fear of the unknown that is delaying a more rapid take up.