One of the UK’s leading motorway service station operators has warned it cannot get enough electricity to operate electric vehicle (EV) chargers at several of its sites.
Ken McMeikan, chief executive of Moto Hospitality, told the BBC that four of its stations had chargers sitting idle because there isn’t enough power to run them.
Concerns about how the UK’s infrastructure will cope with the expected surge in EV usage have been aired repeatedly in recent years, but usually it has been a lack of charging points that has been the issue.
McMeikan, however, said it’s just getting access to power itself that is a major hurdle.
“Getting the right number of chargers is not a challenge," he said. "Getting enough power for those chargers to actually operate well enough for EV drivers is a major, major problem."
He said while motorway station operators have been given targets to provide a minimum number of charging points, the power suppliers have had no compulsion to supply them.
“There was a target set for the number of chargers by the end of 2023 that there would be at each motorway service area and that was a minimum of six.
"Sadly what there hasn't been is a target set for the power companies of the amount of power that's going to be required to operate those chargers and also a time commitment for the power companies of when that power would be made available ready for those chargers to start to operate."
Prime minister Rishi Sunak this week reiterated the government’s target of banning new petrol cars by 2030, a target that would require the equivalent of a quarter of the output from “an average-sized nuclear power station".
"I don't believe the grid at the moment has the infrastructure and the power available at the time that it's going to be needed," McMeikan said.
"What the government needs to do is they need to set targets on a year by year basis, side by side, region by region, to ensure that there is sufficient power to be able to operate the chargers."