Proof that journalists can put the negative into anything to get a headline:
Two-thirds of London electric car charging points go unused
Figures for June 2014 show that of the 905 units across the capital, only 324 were used (36%). The remaining 581 were not plugged into at all.
By way of comparison, in June 2013 there were 892 charging units in London and during that month a quarter (24.3%) were used.
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However in June 2014 there were a total of 4,678 charging sessions, more than double the 2,243 figure a year earlier. This reflects the quickening take up of electric cars of which there are now about 16,000 in Great Britain.(Link)
In essence…There were more charging units available in 2014 and the number of people using them jumped from 24% to 36%. That’s a 50% increase in a single year.
The figures are actually really positive and I am heartened that government is much more optimistic about this than the media.
The encouraging news is that electric car sales in the UK are at last showing signs of improvement, but we still have a charging network that is running far from capacity.
Running a charging network that is not at capacity costs a few feet of space and has a prominent mindspace benefit. Electric cars are a luxury right now but by 2030 they’ll be a necessity. They will be the most cost-effective way to move around – never mind being zero emissions and orders of magnitude more efficient than internal combustion-based cars.