The government has promised 100,000 new EV chargers for England

The Future of Roads minister Lilian Greenwood has keys to the nation’s piggy bank, and claims the government has lined up £4 billion of investment ‘to support the switch to electric cars’. Translation: more EV charge points are coming.

How many more? Apparently the aim is to make more than 100,000 re-juicing devices available on England’s streets, to help those living in properties without driveways on which to charge overnight.

These charging points will be on top of the 80,000 (ish) public points currently in operation.

The government pledge follows a privately funded investment of £300 million from Believ, which is targeting another 30,000 charge points with that cash. And that's particularly interesting.

Why? Well the Department for Transport (DfT) says the government’s chunk is coming from the already-existing Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) pot, sitting at a committed... £381 million.

So how is the DfT promising more than three times the amount of chargers with only £81m more in cash than Believ? Not a BOGOF discount, no. The DfT tells us the kitty will be used to leverage 'significant private investment', expected to total £6 billion with 'tens of thousands' of points in place by 2030.

In plain English: taxpayers aren't footing all of the bill for these chargers, only some of it.

Oh and for those wondering, the focus on England is because Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own separate funding pots for road transport.

Greenwood said: “A charge point [gets installed] every 29 minutes and our support to roll out over 100,000 local chargepoints in England shows we’re committed to making even more progress.”

Elsewhere, Ed Miliband and his team over at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero have obtained a set of the piggybank keys, confirming £500 million for hydrogen energy infrastructure – welcome news for BMW, Hyundai, Toyota and anyone else still trying to make hydrogen-fuelled passenger cars a reality.