In March 2017, the UK House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee launched an inquiry into the role of electric vehicles in the transition to a low-carbon economy and as part of the Government’s Industrial Strategy.

In response to this inquiry, a consortium of researchers working on the charging of electric vehicles from Durham, Žilina and Cambridge Universities and the Eurpean Commission have submitted written evidence.

The consortium suggests the UK government should balance opportunities for home and public charging. Although the challenges are different in these two cases, they believe information technology can lower infrastructure capital costs in two ways. For home charging, they propose a network congestion protocol inspired by congestion control on the Internet. For public charging, they are in the process of developing incentives for the cooperation of users with the goal of reducing the idle time and the potential build-up of vehicle queues at charging stations.

The statistical analysis of existing data on public charging stations from the Netherlands is expected to improve the state of play in models for the charging infrastructure, and such models could inform the development of UK infrastructure.