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Sallust
The Daily Sceptic
With the evidence increasing for Labour’s Net Zero dreams slowly imploding, another piece of bad news has come along for the end of 2025. According to the Telegraph, for the first time the installation rate of EV chargers has fallen:
Public charger installations are down by 30 per cent for the first 11 months of this year compared to all of 2024, the first time on record the rate has not increased.
Figures from Zap Map, which provides data to the Office for National Statistics, show that 13,469 were installed by the end of November this year, compared to a total of 19,834 in 2024.
The drop is a blow to Labour’s net zero plan to accelerate the switch to EVs and comes at a critical moment, with industry figures warning that a planned pay-per-mile tax on electric cars also threatens to deter sales.
Richard Holden, the Shadow Transport Secretary, said: “Labour is remorselessly driving to Net Zero, wilfully blind to the enormous cost of this obsession to ordinary people.
“And yet, even as they do so, they are totally failing to deliver the infrastructure required to achieve their ideological objectives.
“With EV charger installations falling, Labour are making it even harder for people to switch to electric cars.”
It seems there’s now little chance of the government meeting its objectives:
Fewer than 90,000 EV chargers are currently in operation, meaning an average of 42,000 per year would need to be installed over the next five years to meet the target. That is more than double the annual record for installations set in 2024.
The Government’s 300,000 target is already at the lower end of the National Audit Office’s forecast that between 250,000 and 555,000 will be needed to meet demand by the end of this decade.
The most significant drop was in the rapid category, those with an output of between 50 and 150 kilowatts, which fell by 46 per cent.
Installations of slow chargers, or those with outputs of less than eight kilowatts, are also 37 per cent down.
What’s the reason for this precipitous collapse? The Telegraph claims that increases in energy prices and outrageous standing charges, sometimes as much as 460 per cent for the latter, are to blame for providers throttling back on installations (despite the industry being propped up by taxpayer subsidies).
Of course, there is also the obvious fact that people who cannot, or never will be able, to charge at home at much lower rates than at public chargers are the drivers least likely to join the government’s crusade to electrify Britain’s cars.
Worth noting that according to The Electric Car Scheme, home installation of a charger can cost between £800 and £2,000 (on top of a grant), even assuming you have the parking space and land on which to have one fitted, as well as the spare cash. It cites an average cost of £1,110 (before a grant of £350). As for public chargers, they’re increasingly prone to cable theft.
Meanwhile, the government remains committed to ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, and with hybrids to follow in 2035.
Worth reading in full.
This article was originally published by the Daily Sceptic.
