Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy for Bedford Borough 2024 - 2027

About electric vehicles in Bedford Borough

By the middle of 2023, there were 2,234 EVs registered to owners in Bedford (mostly owned by private individuals, and some by businesses).

This includes battery EVs, which are powered purely by electricity and plug-in hybrid EVs, which also have an internal combustion engine (ICE). Combined, they amount to 2.3% of all cars in Bedford Borough.

This number is rising quickly. Forecasts of EV numbers suggest they will be between 12% and 17% of cars in Bedford in 2027.

Figure 1: Privately owned licensed plug-in cars in Bedford Borough (determined by address of registered keeper), 2011 Q4 to 2023 Q2 (excluding range extended EVs)

Running an EV requires some way of charging the car's battery. People who have off-street parking can install a chargepoint at their home when they buy an EV, and use that to charge the car. People who can install a chargepoint at home are largely doing so. Our survey in autumn 2023 showed that 86% of EV drivers in Bedford charge their cars off-street at home.

Figure 2: Charging methods used by plug-in battery EV drivers in Bedford Borough (EV Survey 2023)

This strategy therefore concentrates on chargepoints for people who don't have off-street parking. Currently, they will often find it difficult to switch to an EV, as they have no convenient way of charging it. Our aim is to remove this barrier to using an EV as far as possible.

The EV transition in Bedford

There is a lot of uncertainty about how quickly people will switch to EVs, and how the technology will develop, for example:

• How quickly EV prices will come down to levels similar to ICE cars
• How quickly a viable second-hand market in EVs will develop, as most people who buy cars do not buy brand new ones
• Whether battery capacities will increase substantially from current typical levels
• Whether battery charging speeds will increase substantially from current typical levels
• Whether on-street chargepoints, cross-pavement home charging options, and/or sharing platforms will become popular options.

Our proposals therefore go up to 2027. Changes in EV technology over this period are likely to be variations on what is currently available, and EV numbers are likely to rise in line with current trends. We will look at the situation again later in the decade, and consider whether any major game-changing development in EV technology is likely to come to market. We will then decide what the best approach is for the years up to 2030 and beyond.

Other vehicles such as buses or heavy good vehicles have different charging needs (they have bigger batteries and need rapid charging). The technology in these areas is also less developed, and other options such as hydrogen fuel cells may become more common than batteries. So we will make plans for these larger vehicles separately, as part of future work on our new Local Transport Plan.

Scope and approach

Local authorities are being asked by the Government to provide charging options on local roads, and particularly for people who don't have off-street parking where they can charge their cars.

Higher powered rapid and ultra-rapid chargepoints on the strategic road network (motorways and major A-roads) are installed and maintained by National Highways, not by us. Chargepoints on these roads are therefore not within the scope of this strategy.

Our new chargepoints will mostly be paid for by the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure scheme (LEVI). This is a Department for Transport scheme that has allocated Bedford £1,010,000 of capital funding, for installing chargepoints, and £346,000 of capability funding, so that we can employ council officers to work full-time on EV charging.

We will award a contract to a chargepoint operator to install and manage the new chargepoints, and we will require them to provide additional capital funding as well.

Chargepoints in Bedford

There are different types of chargepoints, which are often found in different settings. They can be referred to by their speed (slow, standard, fast, rapid, ultra-rapid), although different people have different definitions of what counts as 'fast', 'standard' and so on. Table 1 gives some examples of how chargepoints are often deployed. This is not an exhaustive list, and does not set out hard and fast rules.

Table 1: Chargepoint types and power outputs

Generally speaking, the higher the power of the chargepoint, the more it will cost to charge a car from it. Charging an EV from a rapid or ultra rapid chargepoint may therefore offer the convenience of a fast charge, but at a higher cost. Using a slow or standard charger to charge an EV overnight may be slower, but will be cheaper and will not require an interruption to a journey.

Higher power chargepoints are also usually more expensive to install: they cost more to manufacture, and require more heavy duty and expensive connections to the electricity grid. If we opt for a higher proportion of faster chargepoints, we will be able to install fewer chargepoints overall with our available funding.

Question about chargepoint speeds