Electric car owners may experience problems charging their vehicles on public devices due to patchy mobile phone signals, a new report has found.
Two-thirds of the most popular public electric vehicle (EV) charging points – low-speed devices that offer speeds of up to 8 kW and add a range of around 50 kilometers per hour a car is plugged in – are in areas identified as having poor phone signal to have.
To initiate charging on many of these devices, EV drivers need access to a smartphone app. This allows users to choose the charger they want to use and then pay for the electricity.
Most of these slow-charging devices do not allow contactless payment with a debit or credit card, meaning EV owners rely heavily on their phones to operate them.
However, the RAC Foundation found that 66.4 percent of charge point locations it analyzed did not have a mobile phone signal from at least one of the four major providers: O2, EE, Three and Vodaphone.
Without a phone signal, this means EV owners won’t be able to activate the charger when they need to top up their car’s battery.
New research from the RAC Foundation has found that the UK mobile phone signal is letting the public charging network down, as more than two-thirds of all slow chargers (representing 60% of all public devices) have insufficient signal to enable 100% activation to ensure. of the time
Department of Transportation statistics (based on ZapMap data) show at least 53,677 public chargers available to EV owners nationwide as of early 2024.
Of these, the vast majority (31,910, or 59.4 percent) are Type-2 chargers that offer the slowest speeds of no more than 8 kW.
These devices are often located in public car parks in towns and cities and are most commonly found in rural locations to provide charging solutions for EV owners outside of densely populated areas.
These Type-2 chargers are not to be confused with fast and ultra-fast charging points, which can be found at motorway service stations and offer the fastest charging times.
Connecting to a Type-2 device requires access to a smartphone application in most cases. This means EV drivers rely on a strong cell phone signal to communicate with the devices.
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Mobile phones are an everyday essential and are becoming increasingly important in the use and functionality of cars. Yet poor signal from all four network providers – EE, O2, Three and Vodafone – is affecting the functionality of tens of thousands of chargers in Britain
Britain has four mobile network providers: EE, O2, Three and Vodafone, which other companies such as Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile can piggyback on.
The problem for drivers looking to charge is that unless all four provide decent signal coverage, there is a risk that the user or the charger will not have the connection needed to unlock the flow of electricity to charge the EV.
And this risk is a very real problem, according to the study’s findings.
Across Britain (outside London), only a third (33.4 percent) of Type-2 chargers analyzed by the RAC Foundation are in locations where there is acceptable 4G coverage across the entire network.
In London the situation is slightly better, but not at the level you would expect in the capital, where the signal is almost perfect.
Only 39.7 percent of slow public chargers analyzed in the city had sufficient signal.
Even in London the phone signal wasn’t guaranteed to be good enough to ensure the chargers would always work properly. The risk is that the user or the charger does not have the connection necessary to unlock the electricity flow to charge the EV
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, calls for better infrastructure integration from mobile to car to charger: ‘All these systems need to be designed with an eye laser-focused on real-world network coverage, which is often patchy. sometimes non-existent, and not about to get infinitely better.
‘If signal connectivity at a charging point is an issue, drivers could conclude that the charger is at fault, undermining the confidence we should be building in the reliability of public electric vehicle charging options.
‘In addition, the poor connectivity will not be picked up in the new mandatory reporting system that only applies to the fast charging network.’
This study comes as the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reports that the market share of new all-battery electric cars fell to 15.2 percent in March, compared to 16.2 percent in the same month last year.
There have been increasing calls recently for the government to step up its efforts on electric vehicles, in particular to reduce VAT on public charges to 5 percent
It also follows widespread criticism from industry leaders after the Chancellor failed to deliver one EV incentives for motorists in the spring budget.
Experts and manufacturers said the Chancellor has ‘missed a huge opportunity’ by refusing to respond to calls for ‘fair taxes for a fair transition’.
One of those taxes was reducing the VAT on public charging to 5 percent to bring the cost of public charging in line with energy rates for home charging and make it fairer for EV owners without access to home chargers.
The RAC Foundation suggests solutions could include roaming SIM cars that can connect to the mobile network that is most robust at the charging location, external and/or additional antennas for data, and mast sharing between network operators.
Gooding added: ‘To design reliable connected services that work for motorists, we need a better approach to assessing and reporting the suitability of on-road connectivity so that designers, including electric charging point providers, can select which of the directly available solutions could overcome the shortcomings of the mobile networks.’
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