Charging - the fix is urban fast charging

A few days ago I argued that Europe has solved the charging problem drivers see on holiday, and barely started on the one city dwellers face on a Tuesday night. Several people asked the obvious next question: so what actually fixes it?

Here is the uncomfortable answer. For people who rent in dense cities, the intuitive solution - slow overnight charging at the kerb, a point for every car - will not arrive fast enough, and in many streets it will never arrive at all.

We keep designing urban charging as if it were home charging moved outdoors. A slow point beside each parking space, topping up gently overnight. It is a lovely idea and it collides with reality: on-street parking is not assigned, the electrical capacity in old residential streets is limited, and the permitting and civil works to wire up every kerb are enormous. You cannot guarantee a renter the one thing that makes home charging work - that it is there, free, every night.

So the answer is closer to the opposite of the home-charging instinct.

Cities need fast charging, placed like petrol stations rather than like parking meters. Not a trickle at every kerb, but dense clusters of high-power chargers people drive to for twenty minutes, once or twice a week, the way they once visited a fuel pump. Reliable, always available, never in doubt.

That is a harder thing to build and a harder thing to fund than a motorway hub. But it is the piece that turns ‘I would like an electric car’ into ‘I can actually live with one’ for the millions who do not have a driveway.

Solve that, and adoption stops being a story about early buyers with garages.