Charging ahead: a positive 2024 for UK EV drivers

2024 will be an exciting year of change for the UK’s growing numbers of Electric Vehicle (EV) drivers, with huge numbers of new public charge points installed and more charge points working more of the time.

EV drivers will no longer hope that the car park at a destination – such as a town centre, a shopping park, a hotel, fast food outlet or leisure venue – has working EV charging. They will expect it.

The first destinations to install EV charging were innovators seeking to entice a small but lucrative market segment of early adopter EV owners looking for places to park plus spend time and money at with the added incentive of EV charging when the public network was sparse.

But beginning in 2024 and continuing into the future, car parks which do not offer EV charging will become the outliers. They risk becoming no-go locations for EV drivers if rival car parks offer EV charging alongside other reasons to visit.

Indeed, even destinations offering a very limited number of charge points risk becoming less attractive if the driver experience is regularly one of arriving to find other EVs already plugged in and even queueing to charge. CTEK’s 2023 YouGov survey found more than half (52%) of UK EV drivers having to wait to use a public charger at least one in four visits.