With almost 30% of new car registrations in the UK being fully electric, the shift to EVs is well underway. There’s plenty of attention on the cars themselves, but there’s a bigger question that needs considering: is the country’s infrastructure ready for what’s coming next?
Latest figures from SMMT have shown that battery electric vehicles accounted for 29.8% of new car registrations in August 2026, but there were only 121,000 public charging points as of July.
Whether those figures are reassuring or concerning, simply increasing the number of publicly available chargers isn’t the right answer; the real challenge comes from ensuring that we have the proper charging infrastructure in the right places, with the power and cabling to support it.
Chris Kay, Operations Director at bespoke manufacturer, Custom Designed Cables, predicts three areas that will become increasingly important as EV adoption continues to ramp up…
More high-power charging needed
One of the biggest changes we’re likely to see is more demand for faster charging – people don’t want to be waiting around for hours on end to get back on the road.
For drivers making longer journeys – and especially commercial vehicles – waiting several hours to reach full charge isn’t always practical. Rapid and ultra-rapid charging will become increasingly important, and expected, as the number of EVs on the road grows.
The UK has already made decent progress here, but the majority of public chargers are still the units that offer standard charging speeds. According to the Department for Transport, around 24% of public chargers are either rapid or ultra-rapid.
But it’s not simply a case of installing more charging units. High-powered chargers put a much greater demand on the electrical infrastructure that supplies them. Sites need the right grid connection, distribution equipment and cabling in order to deliver that power safely and reliably.
That means infrastructure needs to be considered from the get-go, rather than an afterthought that can be upgraded once chargers are already installed.
Chargers where people actually park
Public charging gets a huge amount of attention, but the country’s EV infrastructure will also heavily depend on what happens away from forecourts and motorway services.
For most EV drivers, home is the most convenient place to charge. Then there’s workplaces, which will play an increasingly important role as businesses continue to electrify their fleets and more staff members commute in EVs.
And that creates a less visible infrastructure challenge.
A workplace car park might have enough space for dozens of charging points, but is the electrical infrastructure in place to support them? This also applies to blocks of flats, retail units and other commercial buildings. Adding EV charging can create a significant additional electrical load, so businesses need to consider capacity, distribution and cabling before simply installing chargers.
We therefore need to stop thinking about EV charging as something that happens at a charger; it happens across an entire electrical network.
The grid is the bigger challenge
Ultimately, every charger connects back to the grid.
As more electric vehicles hit the road, and as charging hubs become larger and faster, the demand on local networks will only increase. And this is where the conversation needs to move beyond the number of charging points we have and towards the infrastructure that supports them.
A charging hub with dozens of high-powered units sounds, it’s only as useful as the network supplying power to it. If the local grid connection isn’t capable of supporting the demand, then adding more chargers won’t solve the problem.
This also applies to businesses looking to electrify large fleets; installing the charging hardware is only one piece of the puzzle. Making sure the site can actually supply all those vehicles is another one entirely.
These aren’t problems that can be solved overnight, either. Grid connections, upgrades and new infrastructure takes time to plan and deliver. But if EV adoption continues to grow at its current rate, that makes forward planning increasingly important.
So, how EV-ready is your area?
There’s also regional factors to consider; the number of chargers available to drivers varies depending on where you are in the UK. London, for example, has a much higher number of public chargers per 100,000 people than some other parts of the country. But that doesn’t quite give us the full story.
Two areas could have a similar number of chargers but very different levels of provision when you consider the number of EVs on the road, the speed of those chargers and where they are located. This gives us a more useful way of looking at the issue.
So rather than asking “How many chargers are in my area?”, a better question is “Does my area have the right infrastructure for the number of EVs it needs to support?”
An area that has a rapidly growing EV population but relatively little rapid charging could face a very different challenge from somewhere with a dense network of high-powered chargers.
Looking at charging provision alongside EV adoption could therefore give us a much clearer picture of where the UK is genuinely prepared for the next phase of electric vehicle growth.
The next phase
The UK has already made significant progress in building a reliable EV charging network, but the next stage has the potential to be far more complex.
We’re moving away from a world where EV charging was a relatively new requirement, and into one where it’s becoming a fundamental part of our transport and energy infrastructure. And that means thinking about the whole system rather than just counting charging points.
Ultimately, we need more high-power charging where they are needed. We need convenient options at homes and workplaces, and we need to ensure the wider electricity network has the capacity to support.
The cars are already here. The question is now whether the country’s infrastructure can keep up.
