Electric cars would be perfect if we could charge them

That’s the bad news. But now for some good news. And, as usual, it’s led by the car brands themselves, who have done everything within their power to build electric cars that consumers will want to buy. It’s firmly within their own interests to keep the industry on track to meet the 2030 deadline for the end of sales of ICE cars, and as we’ll see, the ongoing issues are not the fault of car companies.

First of all, to put range anxiety and charging anxiety in perspective, data this week from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) shows that in the past decade (and remember, the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe are already 10 years old), the average range of electric cars has trebled. In 2011, the average range of an electric car was 74 miles. Now it is 257 miles, which is enough to put the vast majority of daily drivers’ minds at rest. It means that for most trips you don’t even need to worry about using a rapid charger, let alone any other sort of public charger. It’s far easier now to rely on overnight charging, at home or a hotel, where you can dump the car and walk away, and pay less for the privilege.

The second pledge car companies have stuck to and achieved is the breadth of consumer choice. When that first Leaf appeared in 2011, drivers had a choice of nine plug-in cars. Now motorists can choose from 140 pure electric and plug-in hybrid models, with another 50 due to arrive by the end of 2022. We’ve gone from plug-in purchases accounting for one in every 1,000 cars bought, to one in five new car registrations today. You can buy a pure electric SUV, sportscar, hatchback, saloon, estate or supercar now. And, importantly, car makers are designing electric cars from the ground up, instead of trying to shoehorn a battery and motors into an existing ICE platform. This final step in particular should iron out some of the common issues of previous electric cars such as the cramped boot or passenger space, and the general feeling that you were getting a marginally worse (and more expensive) version of the fossil-fuelled version.

The most shining example to date is the superb Maserati MC20 supercar which comes to market ready for petrol, hybrid and pure electric powertrains, and happens to be the most perfectly resolved supercar on sale right now. It’s an astonishing achievement, but one that gets consistently swept under the carpet because the ownership experience is still well below par thanks to the lack of an extensive charging network. A disappointing 75 per cent of motorists say there are still not enough charging points to meet their needs. This is a crying shame, because it tarnishes the entire ownership proposition. But the rest of the experience makes perfect sense: running costs are so much lower, thanks to benefit-in-kind tax advantages, no congestion charges, lower servicing costs and so on.

And then there’s the ease of running a car that’s essentially looked after by software updates. Tesla is having to get to grips with its aftersales ownership experience fast now that it’s building a bank of used Tesla customers as well as new-car owners. Its plan is to scrap the need to do any servicing or diagnostics by giving owners an app to communicate directly with the car, download the relevant updates and, if still stuck, make contact with the remote-working Tesla van on the road who’ll come out to fix the issue. It’s all about making the EV ownership experience frictionless, much like the drivetrain already is.

So the future, led by the industry, and thanks to its expertise and efforts, is bright. It’s just the darn charging network that’s playing catch-up; OEMs can hold their heads high, and not for the first time.