Britain’s patchy phone signal coverage means drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) could fail to ‘fill up’ at thousands of chargepoints, new research has found.
Most chargers need an adequate mobile signal connection to function and a significant proportion require drivers to access them via mobile phone apps.
A study by the RAC Foundation analysed a sample of 2,059 Type-2 (the common standard chosen in Europe) public chargers across Britain.
The research revealed that the majority do not have an adequate level of mobile coverage 'to guarantee they can be activated 100% of the time'.
Britain has four mobile network providers: EE, O2, Three and Vodafone. Other companies such as giffgaff or Tesco Mobile, piggyback on these providers.
The RAC Foundation highlights that 'unless all four are providing adequate signal coverage at the chargepoint location there’s a risk that either the user or the charger will lack the connection needed to unlock the flow of electricity'.
According to Department for Transport figures (based on data from ZapMap) there were 53,677 public charging devices in the UK at the start of the year.
Of these, 31,910 have speeds up to 8kw and almost all will be Type-2. Chargepoints with a speed up to 8kw are not obliged to provide for contactless payment.
In Britain, outside of London, just a third (33.4%) of the Type-2 chargers analysed were in locations with 'acceptable all-network 4G coverage'.
Two-thirds (66.4%) were in spots where a signal from one, two, three or even all the providers was absent or too weak to work.
In London, the picture was only slightly better at 39.7% and 61.3% respectively.
Where a 4G signal is absent, a residual 3G signal could be available but the national 3G network will be shut down completely by 2033. Vodafone has already turned off its 3G network with EE and Three expected to complete their shutdowns later this year, and O2 next year.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: 'In many instances, the mobile phone has become the key to unlocking the potential of the electric car. Unfortunately, that key does not always work.
'Where signal connectivity at a chargepoint is a problem drivers might conclude that the charger is at fault hence undermining the confidence we should be building in the reliability of public charging options for electric vehicles.
'What’s more, the poor connectivity won’t get picked up in the new mandatory reporting system applying only to the rapid charger network.'
He concluded: 'In order to design reliable connected services that work for motorists we need a better approach to assessing and reporting the adequacy of on-the-move connectivity so that designers, including electric chargepoint providers, can select which of the readily available workarounds would cover for the shortcomings of the mobile networks.'
The RAC Foundation recommended that workarounds could include:
- signposting the availability of a limited wi-fi hotspot for drivers to use
- use of roaming SIM cards, increasingly common in the Internet of Things sector
- use of external and/or directional antennae for more reliable data connections;
- making ‘roaming’ RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) cards more widely, and freely, available to remove the motorist’s phone from the equation;
- improvements to signal quality through the 'Single Rural Network' (SRN) pro-gramme of mast sharing between mobile network operators;
- satellite internet provision from operators like Starlink and OneWeb; and,
- as a fallback, the charger itself could be set to default to provide a free charge up to a limit that would at least guard against a potential breakdown
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) reports that the market share of new pure battery electric cars was 15.2% in March. It has called for EV purchase incentives including reduced VAT on public charging and halve VAT on new electric vehicle sales.
The mobile signal strength data used in this analysis was provided by Teragence. There was missing data for a small number of the chargers sampled.
