Charles Trim, head of commercial at Sinewave, explains what it takes for the EV infrastructure sector to build with confidence in a turbulent market.
Over the last couple of years, the EV infrastructure sector has been living through a sustained period of uncertainty that has tested the resilience of everyone within it. To a large extent, that uncertainty has its roots in the signals coming from the government.
It’s fair to ask if the government has mislaid its commitment to the EV industry. The ZEV mandate was relaxed in April 2025, with fines reduced for manufacturers failing to meet their targets. Hybrid vehicle sales were extended to 2035 – a let-off for auto manufacturers previously locked to selling battery electric vehicles (BEV) from 2030 onwards. From 2028, the government intends to tax EV use at 3p per mile, and it has decided to challenge a tribunal ruling that public charging should warrant the reduced 5% VAT rate enjoyed by domestic electricity users.
These actions send market signals that are at best ambiguous, and they have a massive influence on investor confidence. When political leadership looks weak, or its direction uncertain, the investors who supply the essential capital on which things are built start to see the UK as a riskier bet than before.
The UK’s EV market was already struggling. Private EV sales may be growing since the most recent instability in the Middle East, but this uptick is fragile, and it comes after a period of weakened demand. Meanwhile, registrations of electric vans and HGVs continue to lag behind targets. The effect of weak policy is real.
The consequence of indecision
It’s perhaps not surprising that UK public charger installations in 2025 grew at their slowest rate since 2022, with fewer new EV chargers added than in any of the three preceding years. The buying cycles of fleet operators have lengthened as boards grow more cautious about capital commitment in a market whose direction keeps changing. At the same time, charge point operators (CPOs) continue to struggle with a classic chicken and egg situation: EV adopters demand widespread charge points, but these can’t be built profitably without a bigger user base to support them.
Inevitably, this lethargic market is having consequences for CPOs, and it’s interesting to look at their different strategies for riding it out. Some organisations are well-funded and are pressing ahead to achieve a clear vision. InstaVolt, for example, opened its largest UK hub at Three Maids Hill near Winchester last year, and continues to plan and deliver large charging destinations. It believes in its commercial model and remains focused on its mission regardless.
Others – including names that were once near the top of the pile – look like they’re positioning themselves to sell. That may be because they or their backers have decided the EV reality isn’t materialising, or that investors are looking to secure a return in a market with an uncertain future.
Most emerging markets tend to go through waves of consolidation before they arrive at maturity, and – fuelled to some extent by uncertainty – that’s what we’re beginning to see in EV infrastructure. In years to come, it’s likely public charging will trend towards a small group of operators with the strongest offering or deepest pockets. In many of the businesses nearing the end of their first decade, founders and leaders are reassessing their strategy in response to changing market realities.
The elephant in the room
All of this is without mentioning the difficulty of connecting to the grid. The challenges for projects spanning grid-scale energy, data centres and large developments are well known, with Great Britain’s distribution and transmission networks becoming more and more constrained. The more acute problem for EV charging comes at LV and 11kV – the levels at which most public charging projects connect. Here there are limits to the power and number of chargers you can hook up at each site given the finite amount of resource available nationwide. At some point – accelerated by larger batteries and faster charging – capacity will run out and that might be sooner than most people think.
There are routes through this challenging landscape, however, and imaginative power businesses are already innovating their way around the constraints. For example, we can make comparatively more cost effective 11kV connections go further by supporting them with on-site battery storage. Cycle that battery through the day, and you can install multiple high-powered chargers where you previously couldn’t. Done well, this approach can support even large charging hubs like Three Maids Hill, which uses large-scale solar and battery storage to help power 44 ultra-rapid 160kW chargers from a 2,000kVA connection.
Another alternative is for projects that can afford it to step up to a more expensive 33kV connection and put a utility-scale solar farm and/or BESS site behind it – cutting energy costs, managing peak demand, and exporting surplus power back to the grid for additional return. However, this is a fundamentally different proposition requiring major investment, along with an energy connection partner that fully understands both worlds.
Counterintuitively, network constraints may conspire to create commercial opportunities. The remaining untapped 11kV capacity tends to sit in places the market has historically ignored – rural routes and stretches of road with little or no existing provision. On their own, those sites rarely justify the investment, but an operator willing to build a reason for drivers to stop can make them work. InstaVolt’s Chicklade site – where Sinewave is the appointed independent connection provider – is a good example of exactly this. Take a location you might otherwise drive past, add battery-supported charging and a community touchpoint featuring an on-site café and provisions including a butchers, bakery and deli, and you’ve turned a marginal site into a viable one. Solve the power problem and the commercial problem together, and the map of what’s possible changes.
While public funding is limited, especially when considered against the scale of private investment still flowing into the sector, how it’s administered also has an impact on which projects get built, and how. As an example, we were recently involved in a project that, after two years of negotiation and planning, was almost two weeks away from breaking ground. The customer missed its government funding window by around 48 hours and missed out – there was no grace period, and seemingly no recognition of the resources that had already been committed.
In this case, the project will still be built, but with private funding and will see a delay of roughly 6-8 months. That’s an issue for a site that could and should have been publicly funded, because it’s taking private capital away from other projects that now may not get built and creating further uncertainty around government commitment to spending in the market. Too much rigidity in public funding tightens the private pool that the sector depends on. It also runs the risk that much-needed but less commercially attractive schemes never come to fruition.
Policy certainty, delivery assurance – what the market needs
If that all sounds a bit gloomy, it’s important to say the UK market isn’t as frightening as it might look on paper. Yes, there has previously been uncertainty and a lack of leadership, but our sector still has strong fundamentals, and there’s a lot of belief in the long-term direction of travel. Despite the shaky ground there is still growth and the need for infrastructure; we need electric vehicles at scale, even if they are appearing more slowly than some had predicted. But like the charging industry that depends on them, the businesses and consumers considering getting EVs need clear signals and confidence that the UK still believes in its electric rollout.
While policy certainty and clear political direction are urgent, private investors also need better guidance in a turbulent market. With disruption and consolidation likely to remain an issue, investors need partners to help them make sense of the signals and guide them towards the projects and configurations most likely to succeed. Amplify, part of the Sinewave group, specialises in providing that guidance. Detailed site assessments, load analysis and strategic planning ensure projects are viable, scalable and cost-effective.
In this market, it matters that the people you approach for guidance are committed for the long run. Sinewave has been here since the beginning – InstaVolt has been a customer since our earliest days in EV. Last year’s investment by Three Hills supports our growth ambitions: we’ve been here, we’ve done it, and we’re committed to what comes next.
But if there’s one thing we’d ask from the government, it’s decisiveness. Pick a lane and commit to it, so that the market has a clear, consistent direction. Private capital will follow, and that – far more than any public funding pot – is what will get the momentum back.