The Pembrokeshire Coast and Brecon Beacons national parks are among the best in the UK to charge up electric cars for visitors, a new study reveals.
Since 2015, there has been a 440% increase in charging points on average across all 15 national parks.
The biggest increase is the Pembrokeshire Coast national park which had 1 public charging point in 2015, but now boasts 19 – a 1800% increase.
EV-isitors to Snowdonia will struggle to find charging points and the Broads & North York Moors are the only UK national parks without any public EV charging points.
On average, a national park in the UK still only has 21 public charging points, which each needing to cater to 23 EVs per point, so there’s still room for improvement across the UK.
Although the increasing numbers are promising, they are still a far cry away for what’s needed to supply the future fleet of electric vehicles.
Public charging points will be many EV drivers’ only option due to the rush to booking holidays in June and beyond for the rest of this year or into 2021. If there is a local lockdown, hotels will be forced to close, meaning access to public charging points is absolutely vital in order to enable visitors to the region autonomy. It’s also crucial for local attractions that there is nearby access to charging points.
Brecon Beacons is 519 square miles in size and spans over mountaintops and moorland. In the region, there are 5.5 electric cars for every public charging point, which makes them relatively widely available. With the Brecon Beacons being in Wales, that means that no national park in England makes the top 3 of our EV friendly national parks list.
Another early adopter of EV technology, the national park already boasted 12 public charging points by 2016. Overall, there are 13 locations where you can find public charging points, with 26 in total spread out across the region. For comparison, the other two national parks in Wales don’t have as many public charging points per EV as the Brecon Beacons. Pembrokeshire Coast features a charging point per 7.6 EVs, while Snowdonia has one per 19.1.
On average, each point is used by six evs and in the Beacons each is no further than 15 miles apart. Snowdonia on the other hand has just seven points and they are 31 miles apart.