Charging infrastructure has been a concern for EV adoption. People buying electric cars makes installing more chargers worthwhile, but people need the chargers to buy the cars.
Mark Gilbert, chair of Drive Electric, says if we build chargers the EV drivers will come. In an op-ed with DRIVEN, he said "we can’t wait for EV numbers to hit huge numbers before we invest in the charging infrastructure. New Zealanders won’t buy EVs if they can’t charge them. Infrastructure must lead mainstream uptake."
Automakers are working hard to provide and invest in charging infrastructure, but a study suggests that a lack of chargers and infrastructure doesn't necessarily deter EV adoption.
The study, conducted by USwitch, found that Europe's countries with the highest number of EVs don't necessarily have the best charging infrastructure.
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The study used several metrics for its findings, including charger density and the average annual cost of charging.
Interestingly, Norway has Europe's highest rate of EV adoption by a long way. The country has an imminent ban on gasoline and diesel cars, which meant a huge spike in EV sales, accounting for two-thirds of car sales in 2021. In fact, so many EVs were purchased that the Norwegian government asked people to stop driving them and to take public transport instead to try to reduce congestion.
However, according to the study conducted by USwitch, Norway isn't in the top 10 of European countries when it comes to fast, cheap EV charging.
The study put the Netherlands at the top of the charging infrastructure table for having 24 chargers every 6.2 square miles (16 square kilometres).
The Netherlands is a very small country, and according to 2019 statistics, it had more than 50,592 EV chargers within its 13,082 square miles (33,882 square kilometres) of land, which is an impressive installation rate.
But Norway is quite a bit larger than the Netherlands and had just 16,000 chargers in 2020, covering 148,729 square miles (385,206 square kilometres).
Considering Norway is clearly meeting people's needs when it comes to their electric cars, EV charger density may not really be as important as we think.
According to the NZTA Journeys website (in March 2022), there are just 326 public EV chargers in New Zealand, which is 268,021 square kilometres in size.
Gilbert says "there may be more as it’s hard to get exact numbers, but analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that New Zealand has the lowest ratio of public chargers to EV stock in the developed world."
Despite this, Gilbert says "thanks to maturing vehicle technology and the government’s incentives, EV uptake is surging in New Zealand. In the last year, EV registrations have increased by 55 per cent (February to February)."
So, perhaps charging infrastructure doesn't deter EV adoption. But, as Gilbert says "by 2035, it’s estimated that there could be more than 1 million electric vehicles on our roads. By 2050, almost all light vehicles will be electric. The scale of infrastructure needs to meet that demand."
"We can’t wait for EV numbers to hit huge numbers before we invest in the charging infrastructure. New Zealanders won’t buy EVs if they can’t charge them. Infrastructure must lead mainstream uptake."