In January 2022 BEIS commissioned a survey with 1000 EV drivers to help understand the public attitudes towards, and the current use of, smart charging at home and in the workplace.
In January 2022 BEIS commissioned a survey with 1000 EV drivers to help understand the public attitudes towards, and the current use of, smart charging at home and in the workplace. The study provides baseline evidence to inform the monitoring and evaluation of the progress of the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 against their objectives.
The cross-sectional survey was distributed via the YouGov panel with responses from just over 1000 EV drivers. The YouGov UK panel is an online panel of over 800,000 people of all ages and all socio-economic groups. The panel were pre-screened prior to the survey commencement to establish whether they had a battery electric vehicle or plug-in electric hybrid vehicle. The YouGov panel uses a non-probability-based sample which limits the generalisability of the results.
The findings from this study suggest that there is an underutilisation of smart functionalities. Although the majority of dedicated chargepoints in private off-street locations have some level of smart functionality, they are typically not being used to the best of their ability. For example, 41% of drivers with dedicated chargepoints had functionalities which enable charging to be scheduled. However, out of these drivers, only 27% of BEV drivers and 14% of PHEV driversuse charge scheduling every time they charge. Over half (54%) of PHEV drivers never use the scheduling function, compared to 30% of BEV drivers.
