Britain Priced the Empty Charger. Drivers Had Been Paying.

The global view

The number of the week is 94%. That is how much rapid public charging in the UK rose in real terms between 2021 and 2026, according to the independent review led by Philip New. Slower chargers rose 69%. The review puts most of the blame on fixed costs, network charges above all, and on low utilisation, ahead of wholesale power prices.

For a month this column has asked who pays for the hours when chargers sit idle. So far we have named Korean taxpayers, Australian households and, last week, lenders who were really rating councils, not drivers. Britain has now measured the answer nobody had to legislate: the driver pays, one kilowatt-hour at a time.

The Budget's response is £100 million for lamppost chargers and a taskforce. Everyone else kept building as if utilisation were someone else's problem. China's public chargers run at 6.51% while its carmakers race to the megawatt. In Korea, SK sold its charger maker with five-eighths of the price tied to how the business performs in 2028-29. When a seller agrees to be paid in future results, the market has stopped paying for promises.

Europe

The UK's charging cost review landed alongside the Autumn Budget. The headline is £100 million over two years from spring 2027 to cut prices at lower-powered residential chargers, worth an estimated £150 a year to drivers without a driveway. Nobody has said yet how the money will reach them. On our arithmetic, £50 million a year covers the full £150 for about 330,000 drivers, and only if none of it goes on administration.

The more interesting idea is tariff porting: billing a local AC session to your home energy tariff, which could cut 15-20p per kWh. It goes to an industry taskforce, not into law. VAT on public charging stays at 20% and is now written into the Finance Bill, ChargeUK called the package inadequate, and the same Budget extended the fuel duty cut until July.

The review's diagnosis deserves more attention than its cure. High network charges and low utilisation are what you get when a market builds its chargers ahead of the cars. We found exactly that when we put Europe's 31 EVs per fast-charging port next to America's 72. A subsidy lowers the price on the receipt, but only more cars per charger lowers the cost behind it.

Germany is building where the cars already are. The transport ministry and Autobahn GmbH will open more unstaffed motorway rest areas to private operators, with tenders from spring 2027 and investment expected in the hundreds of millions. That comes on top of Deutschlandnetz's 9,000 fast-charging points at more than 1,000 locations.

On trucks, Daimler Truck board member Achim Puchert wants EU CO2 targets tied to the actual infrastructure rollout. MCS task force chair Rustam Kocher disputes the OEMs' claim that Europe needs 35,000 truck chargers and cites an ICCT estimate closer to 5,000. Our own map put it at 2,650 megawatt bays by 2030, much closer to the ICCT than to the lobby.

North America

NEVI money is flowing again. Litigation by the Sierra Club and state governments overturned the federal freeze, and since then Texas has awarded $226 million for 321 stations, Colorado more than $23 million for 270 fast chargers, and Arizona has opened its first three federally funded sites. Texas works out at roughly $700,000 per station on our arithmetic.

As we reported three weeks ago, Tesla's first Megacharger opened outside a Pilot in Georgia. This week Pilot and Tesla formally opened Ellabell, Georgia, and Tulare, California, with six and four stalls of up to 1.2 MW each. Fort Stockton and North Las Vegas are nearly done. Ten stalls across two states is a pilot in both senses of the word.

Ford's Fathom pickup, from $28,350, puts the inverter inside the vehicle and delivers more than 10 kW of AC power. That cuts the cost of home backup hardware by roughly 60%, to about $2,082 plus installation, and Ford has formed a working group with five utilities on interconnection rules. Cheaper boxes are the right fix: our V2X analysis found a parked car earns a few hundred euros a year, so the hardware cannot cost thousands.

Blink Charging plans to become Blink Energy and add energy management and storage across its 48,000+ networked chargers. One of its 52 company-owned DC sites cut billed peak demand by 23% in its first month. One site and one month is an anecdote, but it goes after the line on the bill the UK review just singled out.

China

Chinese cars now accept charging at 15C, while 90.3% of the country's public chargers are still under 250 kW. The carmakers are closing that gap themselves. BYD has 12,100 flash-charging stations on the way to 20,000, Geely plans 22,000 with 2.2 MW peak output by the end of 2027, and CATL is aiming for 100,000 charging and swap stations by 2028. The same analysis puts utilisation at 6.51% and paybacks at six to eight years, in line with the 5-6% we quoted a month ago.

Chery joined this week with Volt-Dragon: 1.44 MW peak and 10-97% in 6 minutes 50 seconds. It starts with 100 stations in ten cities and targets more than 20,000 V2G-capable sites worldwide by 2029. As we argued in why faster charging is overrated, the megawatt sells cars first and charging second.

Battery swapping is getting a wave of alliances. CATL had 2,520 EVOGO stations at 30 September and Nio runs 4,186, the same Nio that sold Geely 30% of NIO Power earlier this month. Private buyers are still unconvinced, so the clearer case is trucks: CATL's new QIJI system claims five-minute swaps, with 900 stations by end-2026 and 2,000 by 2027. Whether any of this reaches Europe is the question in our deep dive this week.

India

Delhi had 14,225 charging points on 30 September, three months ahead of its December target of 13,913, after adding 5,312 in nine months. The next target is 32,062 by 2029, and from January 2027 new three-wheelers and N1 goods vehicles must be electric. That puts the demand in law first and counts the chargers second, which is the right order.

New Delhi also sanctioned Rs 8.9 crore for 10 e-truck stations with twenty 360 kW chargers, plus Rs 127.1 crore for 382 sites under PM E-DRIVE. Government sources describe a plan for over 250,000 public chargers a year, along with safety standards for charging and swapping.

Tata Motors' network passed 1,000 MegaCharging points across 200 cities with 40 MW installed. On our arithmetic that averages 40 kW per point, which is what "mega" means in India for now. Blue Energy Motors and HPCL opened a heavy-truck swap station in Bhiwandi, extending the Mumbai-Pune Electric Freight Corridor.

Rest of Asia

SK Inc. is selling all of SK Signet to SK Eleclink, the charging platform private equity firm Anchor Equity Partners bought from SK Networks last year. The price is up to 200 billion won: 75 billion at closing and up to 125 billion in earn-outs tied to 2028-29 performance. SK called charger manufacturing non-core, and a merger with the operator is under review.

In August we wrote that nobody is buying CPOs, they're buying the pieces. Here an operator buys its hardware supplier, and the seller agrees to be paid mostly in future results. It is the same discipline the lenders showed last week: pay for what is proven and defer the rest.

Korea also starts a public Plug & Charge pilot on 30 fast chargers from 2 November, after Hyundai Motor Group handed its certificate infrastructure to the state. That gives Korea a single national authority for charging certificates. Europe has no equivalent, which is why nobody can say where Plug&Charge works despite AFIR's mandate.

Gentari signed with BYD to bring Flash Charging to Malaysia's intercity corridors, as Malaysian BEV sales nearly doubled to 53,500 in nine months. In Singapore, Tesla opened four Supercharger bays to other EVs at 63-91 cents per kWh against 47-67 for Tesla owners. Its other 18 sites stay closed.

Oceania

Western Australia's 110-point electric highway is ageing, and councils are paying to keep it running now that RAC has exited. The Shire of Harvey faced $50,000-120,000 to replace a 2015-era charger and chose a $4,000 stopgap repair. Last week lenders treated councils as charging's safest payer. In WA, councils got the bill without the concession.

NSW passed a "right to charge" for apartment owners, barring strata committees from unreasonably objecting to charger installations. ARENA put $2 million into Alchemy Charge's $7.4 million Strata Assist, which installs metered sockets operated by Origin and launches 1 February.

ARENA also committed AU$4 million to a 130-vehicle commercial V2G trial led by JET Charge. In New Zealand, research commissioned by EECA puts household V2G savings at about $2,000 a year against a $13,000-14,000 installation. Our European modelling found a few hundred euros, and even at $2,000 the payback is six to seven years.

South America

A quiet week. The only item tagged to the region is a resurfaced podcast on mobile DC chargers for fleets waiting years for a grid connection. Its best line is that "temporary" units tend to become permanent.

Africa

Malawi's Sky Energy Africa is launching 100 electric taxis, 40 fast chargers and a ride-hailing app, pitched against a fuel import bill of $60 million a month. Parliament has scrapped customs and excise duty on EVs, and the energy regulator is drafting rules to put charging at designated fuel stations.

Nigeria's House of Representatives wants import duty concessions for EVs tied to local investment in charging, service centres and spare parts, and Uganda is tightening licensing for operators working outside the law. Regulators here are writing the rules before the network exists, which is cheaper than doing it the other way round.