🇬🇧 United Kingdom.
The European Parliament recently adopted its position on draft EU rules aimed at encouraging the deployment of charging infrastructure for cars, trucks, trains and planes, as the EU’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
Parliament’s position is that charging stations should be accessible to all vehicle brands, and “payment should be easy.” They should display the price per kWh, which should be “affordable and comparable.” Parliament also wants an EU access point to be set up by 2027 to provide information on the availability, waiting times and prices at stations across Europe. “At the moment we have 377 000 charging stations in the EU, but this is half the amount that should have been achieved had EU countries lived up to their promises,” said Ismail Ertug, the Parliament’s Rapporteur on Alternative Fuels Infrastructure.
Separately, the UK government has proposed rules focusing on charging experiences within the UK. The headline feature of these rules is a mandate for 99% charging station reliability in the UK, as 15% of EV charging stations in the UK were out of service, and The UK wants to lower this number to 1%.
This is a good step forward, not just for Europeans but for electric car drivers everywhere. So perhaps some of these requirements will percolate to other areas, and maybe we’ll get a little more charger reliability here in all world as a result.