Executive Summary
This response advocates for the provision of a government facilitated and governed interface (API) for live charge point data to enable the development of software and research addressing electric vehicle (EV) driver concerns when planning journeys. While regulations like the Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 mandate that charge point operators make certain data freely available, the current arrangements are impractical for real-world use. Each operator publishes data only for its own network, but this is often inconsistent, unreliable and in non-standard formats, requiring researchers and developers to negotiate access and maintain integrations on a per-operator basis.
Commercial aggregators, such as EcoMovement, address this fragmentation by packaging these data sources and selling access as a service. While this provides a workable solution, it falls short of enabling the Government’s objective of open, freely available charge point data that can be readily used to improve the EV charging experience. In practice, the fragmented and operator-specific nature of current data publication makes large-scale reuse costly and continues to constrain research and innovation.
By enabling reliable, standardised and openly accessible live charge point data on a national scale, the Government would unlock significant benefits across industry, academia and the EV user community. Improved data access would support the development of more accurate driver-facing services, better evidence-based infrastructure planning, and higher-quality research outcomes. Collectively, these improvements would enhance confidence in the public charging network, reduce friction for EV drivers, and support wider EV adoption - helping to advance the UK’s transport decarbonisation and net-zero objectives.
This evidence suggests the following policy recommendation:
- 1. The government should facilitate and govern the creation of a single, open and free interface for serving live charge point data aggregated across all charge point operators. This interface should be reliable, standardised and easy to access, enabling scalable reuse of charge point data and fostering innovation across industry and academia.
Authors
Dr Bruno Arcanjo, Research Fellow at the University of Southampton specialising in computer vision and efficient AI.
Professor Andrew Cruden , Professor of Energy Technology at the University of Southampton and Principal Investigator of the FEVER programme grant.
