Drivers call for more electric car charging stations in Britain after Tesla owners were forced to queue

Electric car drivers have called for more charging points to be installed across the UK after some Tesla owners queued for three hours.

Chaos engulfed the electric vehicle network as demand seemed to outstrip supply in some areas.

According to data from Zap Map, there are currently 6,712 fast and ultra-fast charging devices, spread across several sites in the UK, for more than 420,000 cars.

Members of a Facebook group called “Tesla Owners Club UK” have expressed frustration with the queues.

Zap Map data shows the number of charging points and who they cater to in the UK

One said, “Someone take the mic from Tebay?” I’ve been here for over an hour. Still 15 ahead of me in the queue for a loader. Easily another 2 hours to wait – minimum.

A second added: “We need more superchargers. I love Tesla, but this country is not up to standard if it wants total electricity!

A third said: ‘I and new owner of Tesla are super disappointed with the charging lark. Nobody told me that a winter charge would barely achieve half the performance.

“Tesla charges too much to use their chargers. Finding a best value podpoint averages 40p.

The huge queues came as millions hit the roads to get home for the festive period, while ongoing rail strikes forced people to drive. Pictured: Queues at Penrith

Tesla owners wreaked havoc on car charging across the UK yesterday over the Christmas holidays with dozens of electric vehicles forced to wait in three-hour queues.

Cars were blocked across the country, with winding queues spotted in Hertfordshire, Cumbria, Westmorland and Telford.

The huge queues came as railway strikes forced millions onto the roads to get home over the festive period. Another 12million cars were also expected to be on the UK road network today amid ongoing industrial action.

About 24 Tesla owners waited to charge in a Waitrose car park in the village of South Mimms, Hertfordshire, on December 25.

One TikTok user claimed the wait at the station was around an hour, saying, “Here they are all queuing, waiting an hour or whatever for their recharge. They are everywhere.

The Telford Services compressor (above) was impacted, with one person saying: ‘Absolute carnage at the Telford compressor today. 4 teslas parked waiting to be charged’

The Tebay Southbound Supercharger in Cumbria, near the M6 ​​junction, also saw a high volume of vehicles attempting to recharge yesterday.

Another Tesla driver told MailOnline of problems in Crawley, Sussex, where two of eight stations were out of service.

Another wrote on Twitter: “Really upsetting to see the whole family waiting two hours to charge the car.”

Elsewhere, the Telford Services Compressor was impacted, with one person saying: ‘Absolute carnage at the Telford Compressor today. 4 teslas parked waiting to be charged.

“Everyone’s load is slow due to the number of stalls being used. People are knocking on windows asking how long they will charge.

“Others knock on the windows to ask how long they’ve been waiting.”

A driver from Westmorland, in the North West of England, added: ‘Two hours and 30 minutes waiting for a load. Worst trip as a (a) Tesla driver. Q now 40 deep!’

At an unknown charging location, one Twitter user said: ‘UK services this week have been incredibly busy charging Tesla, currently car 15 in a queue of over 20…but you can still count on the UK public to make an orderly queue.

It comes after the tech giant began offering $7,500 (£6,200) discounts on Model 3 and Model Y vehicles delivered this month, fueling concerns the company is facing a downturn demand as economies slow.

Rollout of electric car chargers in the UK has stalled this year, MailOnline can reveal

The £69,000 price of the Model Y and the £55,925 Model 3 have not been reduced in the UK, but people who buy one this month will get 6,000 free top-up miles.

Tesla’s share price has been weighed down by Elon Musk’s struggles to master Twitter after buying the social media giant for £38billion in October.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wiped off the value of his 13.42pc stake – and he is no longer the richest man in the world.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said: “This is a sign of cracks in demand and not a good sign for Tesla heading into the end of December.

‘EV [electric vehicle] competition is growing across the board, and Tesla is seeing headwinds on demand.

It was also revealed that the rollout of electric car chargers in the UK has stalled so far this year, with the government expected to fall massively short of its target unless it increases monthly installations by 350%.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has set itself the goal of increasing the number of charging stations more than tenfold to 300,000 by the end of the decade.

Between October 1 last year and January 1, 2022, there were a total of 2,448 electric car chargers installed, but in the first three months of this year that number had slowed to 1,915.

According to data from the Zap-Map charging app, which is used by the DfT, the rate of installation of electric chargers has steadily increased for most of the previous six quarters since April 2020, when the rollout was hit hard by the first covid Lockdown.

There were 420,000 purely electric cars on UK roads at the end of February, according to comparison site Next Green Car, while there were 30,290 charging stations across Britain, of which 5,494 were fast chargers.

MailOnline’s analysis also reveals that there is a growing North-South divide, with people in the South having access to more than twice as many charging stations.

London and the South East of England have better access to public chargers than poorer parts of the UK, although many electric car owners also rely on private chargers in their homes.

Separate data shows one connection for 30 electric cars in the South but one for 50 in the North.

The English capital is ahead in rolling out the technology – with three times as many chargers as the whole of Wales – while nowhere is enjoying a bigger boom than the borough of Westminster, the seat of government.

Local authority data shows London has a total of 10,020 electric chargers, dwarfing other major UK cities including Leeds (340), Liverpool (175), Birmingham (248), Cardiff (84), Edinburgh ( 181) and Belfast (55).

Westminster alone has 1,292 available to motorists, ten times more than Manchester (112), York (101), Leicester (114) and Bristol (125).

Are you a Tesla driver who was stuck? E-mail: [email protected]