At last, public EV charging works as it’s supposed to – but there's still a problem

This might sound like I’m stating the obvious, but until just a handful of very short years ago, a visit to almost any public charger was fraught with jeopardy. Will it be working? Will it accept my credit card? Will it be as quick as advertised? Rarely could all three of these be answered in the positive. Now though, finally, the system works.

I recently borrowed the new electric Porsche Macan. But instead of supplying the fastest, most powerful and most expensive model, the Turbo, Porsche’s PR office dispatched a truck containing the entry-level car. It’s simply called the Macan, or is often referred to as the Macan RWD, since it’s the only variant with a single motor, which drives the rear wheels. It’s the cheapest, the slowest and the least powerful, but it also weighs the least and has the most range of any Macan EV.

This no doubt helped form my newfound admiration for the public charging network. The car arrived with about 90 percent charge, and only after a couple of days of errands, a drive from London to south-west Somerset, then a day-trip to Glastonbury, did I consider looking for a charger. This was found at Solstice Services, close to Stonehenge, and saw the Macan fill its battery at a higher charge rate (274 kW) than even Porsche itself says it can manage. To use this, I simply parked, tapped the Porsche-branded key fob on the charger, and plugged it in. A quick toilet break later, and I was on my way back to London.

The Macan averaged well over three miles per kilowatt hour, even during sustained motorway driving at 70 mph. Town and city driving saw the Macan close in on 4.0 m/kWh, again beating Porsche’s specification sheet (3.14 to 3.66). Compare this to the Genesis GV60, which in six months struggled to even go above 3.0.

The next day, I left my home in south-east London and headed for Oxfordshire. Due to traffic, Google Maps changed its mind and I absentmindedly followed a new route which saved time but added a considerable amount of distance. My destination now felt perilously out of reach, so I pulled off at the next service station, unsure if there would be a charger.

But there was. A new set of rapid chargers from Gridserve, no less. I hadn’t used the car’s own navigation to get there, so it hadn’t preconditioned the battery ahead of arrival, which increases charge speed. Regardless, it still hit 120 kW in just a few seconds, and in a handful of minutes gave me plenty of range to get up to the Cotswolds. A few hours of slow charging at my destination (thank you, BMW/Mini press office), and I once again had more than enough range to get home without doing any of the mental gymnastics that usually dominates any long EV journey.

None of this would be worth a single tweet had I been driving a petrol car, let alone an entire article. But after years of frustration, the UK’s EV charge network is finally – finally – working as promised. Maybe I got lucky with those Gridserve chargers, but it was the first time I’d visited a service station at random, and left a few minutes later with a battery full of rapidly deployed electrons.

Also helpful was how the Porsche Macan’s long-range motorway efficiency was among the best I’ve ever seen from an EV. Even while cruising at 70 mph, it refused to fall below 3.3 miles per kilowatt hour. Multiply this by the 95 kWh battery capacity and you get an approximate real-world range of 313.5 miles. Porsche's spec sheet claims between 333 and 398 miles.

This all felt like a real breakthrough moment for electric cars, at least here in the UK where, it would be fair to say, public infrastructure isn’t our forte.

But, despite all the good news, there’s still a catch. Cost. Public chargers, especially rapid ones, are still incredibly expensive. In my experience, the going rate is about 79p per kWh. Multiply that by half of the Macan’s battery and you’re looking at almost £40 for about 150 miles of range. Plainly, this is unacceptable and I hope increased competition will see prices fall (though I won’t hold my breath). Charge slowly at home on a dirt-cheap overnight tariff and you’re looking at about £3.20 for that same half-fill. Brim the Macan from empty and it’ll be about £6.40. That’s about 12 times cheaper than a public rapid charger. Twelve.

Is the convenience of a super-fast charger really worth paying over 10 times the price? Now that EVs go further than ever, the need to charge in public will surely fall. So even if rapid charging prices don’t come down, our need to use them could decrease too as EVs become more efficient.

All this depends on charging at home, which is something 30% of the UK cannot do, since they have no off-street parking. So while we’re finally making progress with EVs that go far and charge fast, along with a bigger, more reliable charge network, there’s still a long way to go if the UK is going to meet its own mandate of selling only zero-emission cars by 2035.