The numbers: £38 million, 3,000 chargers
The total investment — roughly £38 million — works out to about £12,700 per charge point when you average across the full mix of standard, fast and rapid units. That’s in line with the £10–15k typical for public on‑street installations once civil works and grid connections are factored in. For comparison, our own database tracks 483 Tesla Supercharger locations across all of Europe — a useful reminder that 3,000 charge points in just two neighbouring UK local authority areas is a genuinely large deployment, even if most will be 7–22 kW AC rather than 250 kW DC.
The funding structure matters: £8 million comes from the Department for Transport’s Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) fund, already awarded to Devon and Torbay. The remaining £30 million is private capital from the three operators. That blend of public and private cash is how mass on‑street charging tends to happen in the UK — and it’s a model that echoes what we saw when the plan was first floated (we analysed what the rollout means for families without driveways last year).
Three operators, three distinct approaches
The commission splits across three charge point operators, each bringing a different installation type:
- Wenea – rapid and fast chargers in public car parks managed by district councils (East Devon, Exeter, Mid Devon, South Hams, Teignbridge, Torbay and West Devon). These will likely offer 50 kW or faster DC, suitable for top‑ups during shopping or a sea‑front visit.
- Believ – standard on‑street charging units plus chargers in parish council and community car parks. Typically 7–22 kW AC, intended for overnight or long‑stay charging.
- char.gy – charging infrastructure integrated into existing lamp columns. Lower power (3–7 kW), but a fraction of the installation cost and highly suited to residential streets where digging up pavements is impractical.
This tiered approach makes practical sense. Fast hubs in town‑centre car parks solve the “I need a decent charge while I’m out” problem; lamp‑column chargers serve residents who park on the street overnight. Cllr Adam Billings, Torbay Council’s Cabinet Member for Pride in Place and Parking, explicitly called this out: “This investment will help remove one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption, especially for residents without off‑street parking.”
Why it matters — and what it costs per mile
Devon’s road transport accounts for more than a quarter of the county’s carbon emissions, so supplying kerbside charging isn’t just a convenience play. It’s the only realistic path to electrification for households in terraced homes, flats, or period properties where a driveway was never part of the design. Our earlier piece on the Devon rollout explained the logic: without public infrastructure, around a third of UK households are effectively locked out of EV ownership, no matter how competitive the vehicle price gets.
Now, with operators named, the cost question sharpens. Public AC charging in the UK typically sits around 30–50 pence per kWh, while a home off‑peak tariff can dip to 7–9 pence. That means a driver relying solely on public lamppost charging could pay 3–5× more per mile than someone with a private driveway and a smart tariff. Use our charging cost calculator to run the numbers yourself: for a typical 4 mi/kWh EV doing 8,000 miles a year, the difference between charging at home on 9p/kWh and using a 40p/kWh public charger is around £620 a year. That’s a material cost — but it’s still cheaper per mile than petrol or diesel at current fuel prices. For households that genuinely cannot install a home charger, the public option is the only option, and it’s finally becoming real.
What comes next
The first installations should start appearing within the next few months, though the full 3,000 points will roll out over several years. The councils are also trialling cross‑pavement cable channels (so residents can safely run a cable from the house to a car parked at the kerb) and supporting the transition of Stagecoach’s local bus fleet to electric — both complementary measures that make the public network more useful.
For EV owners in the area, the practical takeaway is straightforward: keep an eye on your local council’s announcements for charging site locations, and when new units appear, use our charging station map to see live availability and compare tariffs. If you’re still on the fence about an EV precisely because you lack off‑street parking, this rollout — if executed well — removes the biggest real‑world objection.
