Car chargers for electric vehicles could become compulsory for new home and office constructions in the England, if a new legislation by Transport Minister Rachel Maclean passes later this year.
The law aims to increase the rate of electric car chargers installation in the country, from 500 plug-in points every month, up to at least 700, as the country accelerates adoption of EVs to meet their target of a 2030 ban on new ICE vehicles.
The UK currently has around 25,600 public car charging points around the nation, but to reach their 2030 target, that figure will need to increase almost twenty-fold to 480,000 by the end of the decade in order to support the projected uptake in EVs, according to a report from UK Government’s Competition and Markets Authority.
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Maclean’s plan, billed as the first of its kind in the world, will also require all the chargers to be capable of “smart charging”. This means that they will have data connectivity to determine the best times to charge your cars while plugged in, to prevent overloading the national electricity grid.
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Speaking to Drive, the MP’s spokesperson told the Australian publication, “We plan to support people to charge their cars at home by ensuring new homes are electric vehicle ready. We have consulted on plans to introduce a requirement for every new home to have a charge point, where there is an associated car parking space.
“We aim to lay regulation in Parliament in 2021. This would make England the first country to introduce mandatory charge points in new homes, cementing its position as a global leader in the race to net-zero emissions.”
The plan has already been set in motion since 2019, where the UK government published a public consultation request for charging infrastructure building regulations in England. The consultation results will be published later this year, and will be used to facilitate discussions on the two government houses in order to pass the legislation.
Last year, the UK Government also announced that it would inject GBP1.3 billion into scaling-up the rollout of charge points for electric vehicles in homes, streets, and motorways, expected to result in 200,000 new charging points in the country.
Included in the initiative is a GBP350 incentive for individual households to install their own charging devices.
[Source: Dailymail.co.uk, Drive.co.au]
