Aug 7, 2026 · 33 min · 10 segments
00:00:00 EV news this week: four stories, one final Bootcamp episode 00:01:53 Could cheaper public charging beat the ZEV mandate?00:08:15 Is the UK EV market growing or just being discounted?00:13:55…
Okay, so would cheaper public charging actually get Britain to its EV sales target? Yes, and it would go past it.
That is a 48% jump in consideration from a poll of over 2,000 people and Charge UK's argument is pretty simple.
It needs to make public charging cheaper, which is what we keep saying.
Right now, charging an EV on the public network costs the average driver around 22 pence a mile.
So on paper, EVs are still more expensive to run than that headline stat suggests.
And if that's if you don't have a driveway.
This lands the same week that HMRC is still appealing a tribunal ruling from earlier this year that said public charging VAT should match the 5% rate on home electricity, not sit at 20%.
We'll come back to VAT properly in segment 4 because it's about to matter a lot more.
Here's the bit I think gets missed.
SMMT's been asking government to water down the mandate all year, saying manufacturers can't keep discounting to hit the targets.
Don't weaken the target, fix the price.
Two trade bodies, two completely different asks, same government inbox.
Only a quarter of people currently say they'd consider an EV next.
In the first half of this year, EVs made one in four new registrations, still eight percentage points behind where the mandate needs it to be.
The market data backs the perception half of this more than people want to admit.
Rapid charging at motorway services isn't actually overpriced compared to what it costs to run.
But nobody driving past a 79p a kilowatt hour sign is doing that maths.
They just see the number and they flinch.
And that's true.
All our short content leads to that.
Okay, so would cheaper public charging actually get Britain to its EV sales target? Yes, and it would go past it.
That is a 48% jump in consideration from a poll of over 2,000 people and Charge UK's argument is pretty simple.
It needs to make public charging cheaper, which is what we keep saying.
Right now, charging an EV on the public network costs the average driver around 22 pence a mile.
So on paper, EVs are still more expensive to run than that headline stat suggests.
And if that's if you don't have a driveway.
This lands the same week that HMRC is still appealing a tribunal ruling from earlier this year that said public charging VAT should match the 5% rate on home electricity, not sit at 20%.
We'll come back to VAT properly in segment 4 because it's about to matter a lot more.
Here's the bit I think gets missed.
SMMT's been asking government to water down the mandate all year, saying manufacturers can't keep discounting to hit the targets.
Don't weaken the target, fix the price.
Two trade bodies, two completely different asks, same government inbox.
Only a quarter of people currently say they'd consider an EV next.
In the first half of this year, EVs made one in four new registrations, still eight percentage points behind where the mandate needs it to be.
The market data backs the perception half of this more than people want to admit.
Rapid charging at motorway services isn't actually overpriced compared to what it costs to run.
But nobody driving past a 79p a kilowatt hour sign is doing that maths.
They just see the number and they flinch.
And that's true.
All our short content leads to that.
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