Public charge point utilisation
Charge point utilisation refers to how much a charge point is used and is an important metric for the EV charging industry, from charge point operators to landowners, investors and grid service providers. It can be used to plan rollout of charge points, development of related services as well as being an input for pricing and promotional activities.
Utilisation varies according to many different factors including the charge point power, demand, location type and length of time since installation. Charge point utilisation can be measured by the amount of time a vehicle is plugged in or the amount of energy that is delivered via a charging session.
The Zapmap Insights team analyses its comprehensive data on public charging points to track utilisation rates and trends across the UK's charging infrastructure.
High-level trends, focused on time-based utilisation and updated quarterly, are covered on this page, whilst more in-depth analysis and estimates of energy-based utilisation is available from the Insights product suite. The 77,000 Individual charge points can be viewed on the Zapmap app, with the vast majority showing live status updates.
How often are public charge points in the UK used?
In the first quarter of 2025, there were over 7.6 million successful charge sessions tracked across the public network by Zapmap. 38% of these sessions were on the low powered network (<50kW) while 62% used rapid and ultra-rapid charge points (>50kW).
On average, looking at time-based utilisation, charge points were used for around 3 hours per day or 11% of a 24 hour period.
Utilisation profile varies by power rating: low-powered charge points (under 50kW) are used less frequently (less than once per day on average) but for longer periods, with an average session time of around 4 hours, whilst rapid and ultra-rapid charge points (50kW+) are used more frequently (typically around 4 times per day) but for shorter periods with an average session time of around 40 mins.
When are public charge points the busiest?
Time of day, day of the week and seasonality factors can impact on how busy a particular charge point is.
Looking at time of day by by power rating, for rapid and ultra-rapid charge points (50kW+) generally used for en-route charging, the most common time to start a charge is between 11am and 1pm. For slower on-street or destination charge points, the most popular times to plug-in are in the morning between 8am and 10am when a driver arrives at a location, or in the evening between 5pm and 7pm coinciding with drivers arriving back home.
How are public charging sessions distributed across the UK?
The geographical area which delivers the highest number of charging sessions through public charging is Greater London, which accounts for 22% of all charging sessions, followed by South East with 17% and East of England with 10%. This is broadly in proportion to the total number of charge points in these areas.
Source: Zapmap data Q1 2025
Utilisation analysis conducted using over 65,000 connected devices (aggregated from EVSE level) which represents approximately 85% of all public charge points across the UK.
More Information
For more information and insight into charge point utilisation in the UK, Zapmap Insights co-hosted the first in a series of Transport and Energy Explains webinars delving into the subject, with representatives from Fastned and GRIDSERVE. Additionally Zapmap Insights and The Green Finance Institute released two papers on Demystifying Utilisation in 2024 and 2023 which define the different ways utilisation is expressed and contain historic trended data.
Other data from Zapmap which we publish on a regular basis includes overall EV charging stats, tracking EV registrations and growth, Zapmap Price Index, home and community charging and the best networks for EV charging.
If you are interested in data and insights on the EV charging market for your business, we can provide much more in-depth analysis and data. Find out more or get in touch with the Zapmap Insights team.
Please note that third parties can use this data provided the source is clearly attributed to Zapmap, any graphs include the Zapmap logo, and a link is added back to https://www.zap-map.com in the body of the article. The data must be strictly copied and updated manually, no automated data collection can be applied in any form. The data can only published in its original state and without any modifications.
