Authors: Andy Hackett, Senior Policy Adviser, and Louise Bernard, Senior Data Scientist

Public EV charging is often framed as a numbers game: more chargers, faster chargers, wider coverage. In UK policy debates, progress can be reduced to headline targets, such as the ambition to reach 300,000 charge points by 2030. Media coverage, meanwhile, frequently leans on simplistic statistics as evidence of a supposed “slowdown” in rollout or EV adoption.

Headline statistics tell only part of the story. The scale of infrastructure alone does not determine whether a system works. What matters is whether charging is used efficiently to meet real demand, ideally at low cost and with low carbon intensity – and that depends on how, where and when people actually use it. Drawing on analysis of the Electroverse platform – Europe’s largest consumer EV charging network – this blog looks at how drivers use public charging across the UK.

The UK network today: location, speed, time of use

The number of public charge points in the UK stands at around 106,000 today, spread across 36,000 locations, serving 1.78 million EVs – around 17 EVs to a charge point. Across Europe, there are 1.28 million charge points at 374,000 locations serving 13.7 million EVs – around 6 EVs per charge point.

Within the UK, regional disparities are stark. London has more than 330 charge points per 100,000 residents – more than double any other English region – reflecting both higher EV uptake and stronger commercial incentives for investors. While this follows predictable market dynamics, it risks reinforcing regional inequalities and highlights the ongoing role for policy in addressing the early-stage ‘chicken-and-egg’ problem in lower-uptake areas.

Number of UK charge points by region, and European charge points by country (Electroverse, 2025)

In terms of speed, slow chargers account for around 44% of connectors in the UK, with rapid and ultra-rapid making up around 26%. However, this is not inherently problematic: slower chargers can work well for longer dwell times, often as substitutes for home charging. Ultra-rapid charging is also the fastest-growing category in the UK and beyond – and innovation is constantly making a mockery of previous definitions of ‘fast’.

UK public charger connectors by speed (Electroverse, 2025)

High-powered rapid and ultra-rapid chargers also deliver the majority of total energy consumed. That is why UK drivers spend an average of 28 minutes per charge, consuming around 27 kWh per session – very similar to the European averages of 27 minutes and 26.6 kWh.

Daily usage profiles show the use of rapid and ultra-rapid chargers peaks during the day, when drivers are charging on the go. Slow charger use is steadier, with a noticeable overnight uplift as drivers take advantage of cheaper, slower charging as an alternative to home charging.

Customer charging profiles across Europe by time of day (Electroverse, 2025)

Most UK drivers today are infrequent users, but a growing number will depend on public charging

Most UK EV drivers currently use public chargers only occasionally, reflecting the dominance of home charging among early adopters. Despite strong growth, EVs still make up fewer than 5% of cars on the road. In 2024, the average Electroverse user charged publicly around five times, consuming roughly 120 kWh in total.

Beneath this average, three distinct usage patterns emerge:

• Local slow-charging users, who charge very close to home, often within 1 km, using slower chargers as substitutes for domestic charging
• Local fast-charging users, who rely on destination chargers at supermarkets, leisure centres or retail parks, typically within 5 km of home
• Long-distance users, who charge far from home – often over 100 km away – disproportionately at weekends and during holidays

Local users dominate in number, but long-distance users account for a large share of total energy delivered because they rely heavily on rapid and ultra-rapid chargers. As EV adoption expands to households without driveways, the balance between these groups will shift, increasing the importance of public charging for routine, everyday travel rather than occasional trips.

Median distance to EV charger by user profile (Bernard et al., 2025)

The UK public charging network is rarely congested

While the charging network will need to grow alongside – and ahead of – EV adoption, it is very rarely capacity-constrained today. Using availability and power data covering around 60% of UK public chargers, CNZ analysis estimates that at peak times only around a quarter of total capacity is in use. For more than half of the time, less than 10% of capacity is utilised. The load duration curve below ranks demand levels over time and helps assess how often the charging network approaches capacity.

This matters for policy. In most places, the binding constraint on public charging today is not physical scarcity, but economics and coordination. Under-utilisation raises costs, weakens the business case for investment, and pushes prices up – particularly for drivers who cannot avoid public charging. At the same time, it creates headroom for flexible charging behaviour, allowing demand to shift in time without threatening local networks.

UK load duration curve of EV public charging (Bernard et al., 2025)

Utilisation varies by charger type. Faster chargers show much steeper load duration curves – higher peaks and more variability – while slower chargers are used more consistently overnight. These differences matter for both grid planning and the design of charging tariffs. For example, faster chargers can offer short-term discounts during periods of cheap electricity supply, while slower chargers can optimise demand over a longer dwell time – not dissimilar to automated overnight home charging.

Load duration curve by charge speed (Bernard et al., 2025)

Price can meaningfully reshape demand

A nationwide natural field experiment from CNZ and Electroverse tested how drivers respond to price reductions during periods of high electricity supply and low wholesale prices. The response was large. A 40% price cut nearly tripled charging activity at participating chargers, while even a 15% reduction increased demand by more than 50%. By contrast, information-only messages encouraging drivers to charge when the grid was ‘green’ had no statistically significant effect.

Change in EV charging demand during a CNZ trial of Electroverse ‘plunge pricing’ events (Bernard et al., 2025)

For charge point operators, this highlights a major opportunity to increase utilisation. It does not require vertical integration: operators can pass through low wholesale prices under different business models, provided they are exposed to wholesale market signals. ‘Smart’ public charging tariffs are already emerging in parts of Europe, supported by new EU rules on real-time price transparency.

For grid operators, matching demand to supply makes for a cheaper, more efficient grid. What matters to them is higher net electricity demand during periods of high supply, whatever charge point it comes from. This new demand accounts for roughly half of the observed increases above; the other half reflects users simply switching between charging apps. Due to the system benefits, ToU tariffs at most public charge points are now the default across China through a national mandate.

For drivers, smart public charging can materially reduce running costs. Under the largest discounts tested in this trial, savvy drivers reliant on public charging would be able to charge at costs comparable with – or cheaper than – petrol. Lower-income areas showed stronger price responsiveness, underlining the equity implications. With EV road pricing planned for later this decade in the UK, creative ways to support low running costs in public charging will be critical for sustaining public support.

Habits and travel patterns matter

While price discounts in our trial triggered large short-run increases in charging, they did not lead to strong habit formation. Discounted events encouraged drivers to try new chargers and operators, but most reverted to their usual locations once prices normalised – and, on average, users visit only around two charging locations over the year. Drivers respond more strongly when chargers are close to home and when they are already likely to be on the road.

For example, the time of day clearly matters - a discounted charging window in the middle of the night, far from home, is unlikely to shift behaviour. The day itself also matters - the distance between drivers’ homes and the chargers they use increases sharply during school and bank holidays, consistent with longer trips. Weekends also see systematically longer charging distances than weekdays.

The holiday bump in longer-distance charging: weekly mean distance to chargers used (Bernard et al., 2025)

The weekend bump in longer-distance charging: mean distance to chargers used (Bernard et al., 2025)

These are a couple of examples that point to the importance of travel patterns in reshaping public charging demand. Reducing behavioural barriers to shifting demand in time and space – through better reliability, clearer information, simpler payment methods and more consistent hardware standards – is likely to be just as important as price.

What this all means for policy and system design

Public charging, like the electricity system itself, is often framed as a supply-side problem. The UK does need more charge points, and funding rollout ahead of demand is justified. But we also need a demand-led charging network that reflects real travel patterns and a power system increasingly dominated by renewables.

Three implications stand out.

1. Measure success by use, not just rollout. Counting chargers is easy; understanding whether they are in the right places, at the right speeds and used at the right times is more meaningful. National reporting should complement rollout targets with utilisation, affordability and reliability metrics, focusing on outcomes rather than assets. One outcome for the Government may be equitable access to public charging, in which case strategic investment should target underserved areas. 
2. Dynamic pricing is a powerful and underused tool. Price signals can simultaneously improve affordability, increase utilisation and align charging with cheap, low-carbon electricity. Mandating real-time price transparency and enabling dynamic public charging tariffs would help drivers access smart charging and bring the innovation seen at home onto the street. For example, policymakers are introducing a statutory open-data fuel finder scheme for petrol to support competition – something that would be even more suited to variable electricity prices.
3. Public charging is an equity issue, not a niche concern. Reliance on public charging will grow. If prices remain structurally high, the transition risks imposing a regressive ‘pavement tax’ on those least able to avoid it. Targeted support for smart, affordable public charging in areas without off-street parking is one of the clearest ways to address this risk - this should feature in the Government’s planned Cost of Public Charging review this year.

As EVs become the norm, good public charging will no longer be a nice-to-have. It will be core transport infrastructure, shaping who benefits from electrification and how quickly it scales. Designing it around how people actually live, travel and respond to prices – rather than outdated assumptions about refuelling – is essential to getting the next phase of the transition right.