Rapid rise – government funds super-fast chargers for motorways.

Britain is finally to get the network of 6,000 ultra powerful chargers which will make travelling long distances in an electric car stress-free.

The new high-powered charging (HPC) units will be up to seven times faster than the current DC rapid chargers, making them capable of adding hundreds of miles of range in just a few minutes. 

The plan is being boosted by a new government fund, set up to help pay for the high-voltage connections needed to feed the HPCs at service stations on motorways and major A-roads. 

Some of the sites will need high capacity electricity supplies to feed the new, more powerful chargers. The infrastructure upgrade would have been too expensive to make economic sense for a private company, so the government help will open up the market and expand the network so there will be 2,500 rapid chargers by 2030 and 6,000 by 2035. 

Cars like the PorscheTaycan are capable of taking high power charges

That might seem a long way off, but there are exciting plans for the near future too. Six HPC points will be installed at motorway services in England over the next three years which will deliver up to 350kW – most current rapid chargers only supply 50kW. Rather than having just one unit, the sites will have up to a dozen chargers, mimicking the Tesla Supercharger network and ensuring waiting times are kept to a minimum. 

The government will insist that all the new points will have live availability updates, membership-free payment and 24-hour helplines so they are simple and easy to use.

The announcement would also appear to spell the end of Ecotricity’s monopoly on rapid charging at motorway services. The energy supplier was a pioneer with its Electric Highway network, but it has suffered from a lack of investment and has been criticised by EV owners for being unreliable. 

Ecotricity currently has monopoly on charging at motorway services