Charging Step 1 - the gap is in the cities

On the road this week, Aurelien de Meaux shared a map of the charging around Tours: a forest of chargers, most of them sitting free in early August. His read - there are plenty of chargers, the infrastructure is running ahead of the cars.

He is right. And it is worth saying so plainly, because the people building these motorway networks have solved something real.

But look at where that forest is.

It is en-route charging: the motorway, the holiday drive, the 1,500 km without a hitch. That was the visible anxiety, and it is now largely answered. Genuinely good news.

The thing still keeping people from buying an electric car sits somewhere else entirely - and it is far less photogenic.

It is the person renting a flat in a city with no driveway and no garage. For them, ‘just charge overnight’ quietly falls apart: too few points on the street, time limits that move you on before morning, no guarantee one is free the evening you actually need it. You cannot build daily life around a charger you cannot count on.

A map of a quiet rest stop on the A10 says nothing about that person. And there are millions of them.

We have proven we can build the network drivers see on holiday. We have barely started on the one they need on a Tuesday night in the city.

That gap - not range, not the motorway - is where adoption will be won or lost.