As sales of electric cars keep increasing we are seeing more and more of them on the road. That simply reflects the rising demand as everyone now knows they will be transitioning away from fossil-fuel cars.

We saw one result of that today. We’re on our way to Devon on holiday in our i3, and called in at Chieveley Services to charge.

On arriving, there was a Tesla Model S charging at one of the Ecotricity pumps, the one with the CCS connector that the i3 needs. After a brief discussion he kindly agreed to move to the other pump so we could charge.

Once we were charging we went inside for lunch, and I monitored the charging on my phone. As it approached 100% we headed back to it only to find a charging queue for the first time ever!

The Tesla had gone and been replaced by a Nissan Leaf. Waiting to charge were a second Leaf and a Renault ZOE. We moved out of the way for the second Leaf, but the ZOE probably had a half hour wait ahead of it.

This type of situation will probably become increasingly common as more EVs hit the road, at least in the short term. Eventually it is hoped that we’ll see all petrol stations, and perhaps most parking spaces, changed over to be charging points.