MEMBERS of the public report a fault with electric vehicle charging points almost every hour of the day, official figures have revealed.
Between November 2021 and October 2022 there were 7,977 complaints lodged by users across Scotland, the equivalent of 21.8 per day.
The statistics, which revealed a monthly list of hundreds of faults, and were compiled by ChargePlace Scotland, were published by Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth following a parliamentary question by Scottish Conservative MSP Maurice Golden.
A separate question by Mr Golden, to MSP for North East Scotland, showed more than 800,000 hours of downtime for charge points across the country over the past year.
Mr Golden said the figures likely under represented the scale of faults as many drivers were too busy to report the issues.
He said: “It’s clear, and commendable, that people across Scotland want to do their bit for the environment by using electric cars.
“But those who do so are having to report faults with an infrastructure that’s been appallingly served by this SNP-Green Government.
“There is absolutely no point in ministers pushing the importance of electric vehicles – and implementing policies to discourage the use of petrol and diesel cars – if the capacity to properly charge them isn’t there.
“And these figures almost certainly understate the extent of the problem, as many road users simply won’t have the time to report the faults they encounter.
“If the Scottish Government doesn’t take immediate action to improve this, the overall objective to clean up the country’s roads will be severely jeopardised.”
A Transport Scotland spokeswoman said: “By population Scotland has the most EV charge points outside of London and also has the most rapid charge points anywhere in the UK. Last year our network of over 2400 charge points was used over 1.7 million times by EV drivers across the country.
“Our network operator has worked hard to improve reliability and we are now seeing the benefits of this approach with an overall uptime of between 95 per cent and 97 per cent. However, we want ChargePlace Scotland to be even better, which is why reliability, alongside accessibility and availability are at the heart of our draft vision for Scotland’s public electric vehicle charging network.
“Most local authorities have already removed free charging tariffs, and by working with partners to create the conditions for more private sector investment, supported through our new £60m public EV infrastructure fund – we will continue to deliver quality public charging infrastructure which supports all of Scotland’s communities.