Call for improvements to electric car charging points across Scotland as figures show record number of faults

There has been a call for improvements to electric car charging points across Scotland as new figures show a record number of faults in the system.

The Scottish Government has confirmed that there has been a large number of faults reported in its £45 million ChargePlace Scotland scheme, the national network of publicly available electric vehicle charging points.

Figures obtained under a freedom of information request have revealed that charging point faults this year already exceed those for the whole of 2020.

The statistics also showed that over the past two years, nearly 40 charging units each week have not been working which has given electric motorists the difficulty of trying to find somewhere else to charge their vehicles.

Figures obtained under a freedom of information request have revealed that electric car charging point faults this year across Scotland already exceed those for the whole of 2020. Pic: John Devlin.

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During 2020, there were 1,677 units reported as being faulty which is higher than the actual number of electric charging units that have been installed across the country.

And in 2021 so far, a further 1,679 faults were recorded, taking the total number since August 2019 to just under 4,000.

However, the operators say the figures do not show how fast repairs were done to the charging points or if individual units developed problems on many occasions.

The statistics also showed that over the past two years, nearly 40 charging units each week have not been working which has given electric motorists the difficulty of trying to find somewhere else to charge their vehicles.

A recent check on the network status discovered that 45 units were at fault in six locations in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen and Dundee.

And it was found that around 21 charging points in Glasgow - or 14 per cent of the total in the city - were subject to a fault report.

A spokesman for the nationwide ChargePlace Scotland project said it was not responsible for the repair and maintenance of charge points.

He said that they were aware that some chargers do not have maintenance contracts in place: “The network we operate is owned by 32 local authorities and over 300 businesses, all of whom have received some element of grant funding to install chargers,” he said

A check on the status of the network recently found that 45 units were faulty in six locations: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen and Dundee.

“We are aware that some chargers do not have maintenance contracts in place and so repairs have been slowed as a result.”

The main group representing drivers of electric vehicles, the Electric Vehicle Association (EVA), said an increase in unreliability saw a transfer in the management of the ChargePlace Scotland scheme to Swarco eVolt, which is based near Innsbruck, Austria.

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Neil Swanson, a director of the EVA, said that while reliability is improving, there are still some issues that need to be looked at and resolved.

He said more than 40 units out of commission each day may not seem a lot, but he said they would would argue it is still too many.

Mr Swanson added that the EVA is asking for information to be placed on the home page of ChargePlace Scotland's website, informing drivers which charge points are working and which are faulty.

A spokesman for ChargePlace Scotland said that ChargePlace Scotland now has almost 2,100 publicly available chargers on the network, which is an increase of over 30 per cent since migration to them at the end of July this year.

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