UK has almost 1M EV chargers, with new public one installed every 25 minutes

They are not all rapid chargers of course. But the point is that mostly those are only needed if you run out of juice on a longer journey. For most normal drivers that only happens a few times a year. Otherwise you just top up at home or using one of the many slow chargers overnight or in a few hours while you are doing something else.

My parents in the Netherlands bought an EV two years ago. They live in an apartment without their own charger in the building. Mostly my father just uses one of several public slow chargers in the neighborhood; once a week or so. He checks on his phone when one is available, drives there and plugs in. They also use chargers at hotels when they are traveling and are typically booking things with chargers available. Destination charging is a thing. Drive somewhere, plug in, do what you came to do, and drive back with enough charge to get home.

They went on a longer trip to France half a year ago. That's the first time he used a rapid charger. The most stressful thing with that is figuring out the payment systems. It's getting better but there are still way too many options for that. Recently Tesla super chargers became an option as well for them (lots of those) and those seem to work best. They drive a Renault.

Anyway, this is very typical behavior with EVs. You charge when it's convenient instead of when you have to. Mostly you are not going to run out on a normal day. It's only on longer journeys that you need to do a bit of planning (make sure the car is charged up before you leave, pick where & when to rapid charge). The worst case is having to take a 45 minute break or so when it's not convenient. That can happen but mostly you can plan to combine that with lunch or something else. And my father is 75, so he needs to have breaks more frequently than the car.

I realize that my experience in an upscale, somewhat suburban part of west London is not representative of the UK in general. But where I live, we've definitely "passed the tipping point" of EV adoption.

There are low speed chargers available in the streetlight poles next to street parking (low cost). There are 22kw slow/medium chargers in reserved spots throughout the neighborhood (medium cost, lower to residents). There are 250kw chargers at gas stations (high cost). The local supermarket has 10+ 250kw charging spots (high cost) and at least half are always available.

It's finally hit the point where there are always multiple charging options easily available nearby and the number of EVs parked in the neighborhood is rapidly multiplying. I see more EVs on my local streets daily.

It's a different world outside of London. Less densely populated areas of the UK can still be a bit of a nightmare for charging, especially during big travel periods. Looking at you, Cornwall.

We had a Polestar 2 as our only car for about 8 weeks at the start of the year, we knew we’d only have it for a short time so didn’t install a charger to the house.

It was a total nightmare, we had to think days ahead to any big trip to make sure we had enough charge to get us through and if we needed to charge en route it was expensive, slow and difficult to find a working charger.

We are back with an ICE vehicle now and it’s so much easier.

It’s great that we are moving toward an EV future but right now you need a dedicated charger and also be prepared to massively pay over the odds on a per mile basis if you have to charge en route somewhere.

Also every charger needs to be tap and pay and every charger should be usable by any EV, screw those Podpoints in train stations that don’t appear in the app and clearly need you to be in some secret club to access.

EDIT: I'm based in the UK

“There were 930,000 UK chargers at the end of June, according to ChargeUK, a lobby group, but the majority of these have been installed in homes and business premises, with only about 65,000 public chargers available.”

The article does not break down the 65K public chargers or the added chargers by charging speed.

The UK seems like it should be a slam dunk for EV adoption; moderate climate, high gas prices, short distances, and an affluent populace. Yet Germany (and Europe at large) is handily beating them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country

Why is this?

Charging has gotten pretty decent in the last couple of years.

I used to be annoyed that signs for highway services don't show which ones have chargers, but they've fixed that by installing chargers at every one of them (at least along my routes).

It's even better in western Europe, where Ionity and Fastned have a pretty dense coverage of 300kW chargers.

I've been road tripping around the UK and Europe for the last three summers, and it's been easy peasy.

Hyundai has a universal charging card that works with the majority of minor crappy charging networks, which solves the pain of having to install seventeen different charging apps.

On 65k public chargers though and only another 20k added per year.

There are close to 30m households so only about 3% of households have a charger.

Can at least any of them to charge a car anonymously?