Competition Regulator Tells OZEV Its £190 Million Motorway Charging Plan Needs More Evidence

• The Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) proposes an indicative £190 million of public money for grid upgrades at about 15 to 25 of the 116 English motorway service areas.
• The scheme is a proposal, and the Competition and Markets Authority’s Subsidy Advice Unit published non-binding advice on 4 November 2026 that asks OZEV for stronger evidence in five areas.
• OZEV’s own assessment says the benefits are likely to go mainly to long distance drivers, and drivers without home charging could gain little, as motorway charging usually costs more than charging near home or at a destination.

Who Pays to Plug Motorway Chargers Into the Grid?

OZEV proposes to spend an indicative £190 million on electricity grid upgrades at motorway service areas. The sum is 47.5% of the £400 million that Spending Review 2025 announced for EV charging infrastructure from 2026 to 2030. The money would support about 15 to 25 sites, roughly 13% to 22% of the 116 English service areas, and the scheme covers England only.

Nothing is settled. OZEV asked the Competition and Markets Authority’s Subsidy Advice Unit (SAU) for a report on 18 September 2026, using section 52 of the Subsidy Control Act 2022, and the SAU published its final report on 4 November 2026. The report spells out its own status in paragraph 1.3: “This report is provided as non-binding advice to OZEV. It does not consider whether the Subsidy should be implemented, or directly assess whether it complies with the subsidy control requirements.”

The SAU tests OZEV’s own legal assessment of the plan and finds five areas where the evidence falls short. OZEV has also left the size of the subsidy, the cap on site connection costs and the reservation period open, so the SAU says it cannot give a final view on whether the plan is proportionate and limits harm to competition until those details are fixed.

What OZEV Proposes and What Operators Still Pay For

The subsidy comes as a discount on grid connection charges, with no payment to charging firms. OZEV would commission electricity network upgrades at chosen sites and then reserve the new capacity for service area operators or charge point operators who want to build open access charging, meaning chargers any electric car can use.

Those firms apply directly to the connection provider, which is either a distribution network operator (one of six companies licensed by Ofgem) or an independent connection provider. They pay a second comer charge. When one customer funds a network upgrade and a later customer benefits from the same work, the later customer contributes to the original cost, and the Electricity (Connection Charges) Regulations 2017 apply that charge for up to 10 years after the upgrade. OZEV would waive part of it to lower the price until building becomes commercially viable, and the connection provider would pass what it collects back to OZEV.

OZEV intends one flat charge for every site, set between £150,000 and £200,000 for each megavolt-ampere (MVA) of capacity a firm requests. It is looking at the lower half of that range, £150,000 to £175,000 per MVA, to balance early take-up against public spending. OZEV rejected a full waiver on the grounds that operators have built at commercially viable sites without subsidy before.

Two limits shape the offer. OZEV’s indicative cap is £20 million per site for infrastructure costs, and the figure is not final. The reservation period is expected to run 3 to 5 years at every site, and it is not final either. Capacity nobody has claimed by the end of it opens to any energy user without a subsidy. Firms that connect after the reservation period pay the full second comer charge until the 10 year statutory period ends.

Operators keep the rest of the bill. They pay for charge points, cabling, metering, on-site substations and civil works, along with car park changes, signage, security and maintenance. Work that serves several customers stays with the network operators. OZEV’s assessment argues the waiver lowers upgrade costs that would otherwise sit with operators or pass through to people charging their cars, but the report sets no tariff and promises drivers no price.

The SAU spots a gap: the scheme seems to put no obligation on beneficiaries to build charge points. OZEV says the Government could introduce regulation requiring a minimum level of charging at supported sites if take-up is low.

Why Grid Capacity Holds Back Motorway Charging

OZEV’s case rests on a connection problem. Service areas are often in less built-up places, far from existing network infrastructure, and some need large or technically complex works. OZEV would pick sites by the gap between current and future capacity, and by whether the cost of the upgrade is out of reach commercially. Eligible sites are then ranked by the gap between the capacity already secured and projected demand in 2035. OZEV sizes the new capacity for demand through 2035 at the least and, at some sites, through 2050.

The market OZEV describes is concentrated: six operators control England’s 116 motorway service areas. The report records rapid and ultra rapid provision at those sites at over 1,740 charge points as of July 2026, about 15 per site on average, a more than threefold rise in recent years. Nine charge point operators now supply it, up from three motorway based operators in 2021.

Many drivers will not leave the motorway to charge. A survey cited in OZEV’s assessment found that 42% of electric car drivers were unwilling to do so, and that 64% of those willing to leave would travel no more than three miles. OZEV uses those figures to argue that competition between a service area and a nearby off-motorway site is weaker than the map suggests.

Third parties who wrote to the SAU dispute the need. One submission questioned how big the market failure is, pointing to off-motorway charging, home and destination charging, longer vehicle range and alternative technologies. A third party also said it had paid for grid connections at motorway and trunk road charging stations without subsidy, at costs it called comparable to the lower end of those for the shortlisted service areas.

What the Subsidy Unit Found Missing

The SAU gives OZEV credit where it is due. Paragraph 1.5 of the report says: “In our view, OZEV has considered in detail several aspects of the Scheme’s compliance with the subsidy control and energy and environment principles.” It adds that OZEV described and evidenced its objective and carried out a thorough balancing test of benefits and harms. Paragraph 2.70 repeats the point: “In our view, the Assessment fully considers the positive and distortionary effects of the Scheme in relation to the policy objectives and its geographic impacts.”

The five areas for improvement in paragraph 1.6 form the core of the report:

OZEV should identify the most likely outcome without the scheme for the types of sites it targets, separating investment that arrives late from investment that never arrives, and explain how the charging sector might develop without the scheme, allowing for the Zero Emission Vehicles mandate. The SAU found the assessment only partly shows what would happen without the subsidy.

OZEV should give more evidence that the money buys investment that would not otherwise happen, including how the design keeps out sites where operators would have built anyway.

OZEV should check whether the scheme contains enough mechanisms to turn subsidised capacity into extra chargers.

OZEV should look for design choices that limit distortion, including eligibility criteria and ways to limit distortion between firms on a site.

OZEV should assess the effects on competition and investment more fully, including the wider benefits service area operators could gain from publicly funded infrastructure, local competition with sites off the motorway, competition between charging firms on site, and future investment decisions.

The SAU adds that no limit exists on the total a single beneficiary could receive, for example one operator that owns several selected sites.

Who Gains and Who Does Not

OZEV’s own list of side effects shows where the benefit lands. On that list, funded sites could get grid capacity sooner and at lower cost than nearby unfunded service areas, non-motorway chargers or future electric lorry sites. Charging and shop revenue could move away from competing locations, weakening their reasons to invest. Support could concentrate among the sites of one operator, and operators that control access to their sites could restrict rival charging firms, above all where they run their own charging business.

A third party told the SAU that the economic benefit goes to the service area operator. Capacity can only be used on that operator’s land, the operator decides which charging firm gets it and sets the rent or revenue share, and an operator with its own charging arm can use the capacity itself. A third party also pointed out that the earlier Rapid Charging Fund required at least two charging firms at each site, and this scheme has no such rule.

For a driver, the list ends with a blunt line. The assessment says the benefits are likely to go mainly to long distance drivers, and that any extra gain for drivers without home charging could be limited, as motorway charging usually costs more than charging near home or at a destination. An independent government review put public charging costs 17p to 20p a mile for a driver who relies on it, against 8p to 12p for a driver who charges mostly at home.

Drivers without a driveway face the biggest gap. Zapmap’s price index for September 2026 puts the average rapid or ultra rapid charge at 79p per kWh, or 24p a mile, and what drivers pay at a public charger shows how far that sits above home charging. The scheme sets no tariff, so the unit price at motorway sites is not part of the proposal.

Electric lorry charging is at an early stage, with under ten public locations, and one third party told the SAU that lasting subsidy for that young market could steer how it grows and hurt competition and innovation.

What Happens Next

The SAU sends its report to OZEV with the two third party submissions it received, and the CMA case closed on 4 November 2026. OZEV decides what to do with the advice. The report says OZEV should finish assessing the final design once it has fixed the size of the subsidy, the cap on site connection costs and the reservation period. OZEV’s June to July 2026 consultation will inform that design.

OZEV’s own conclusion, which the SAU reports, is that the benefits significantly exceed the harm to competition, investment, trade and geographical spread. The SAU judged the balancing exercise clear and structured, yet it still wants more evidence on what would happen without the scheme and on whether the money changes operators’ decisions. If that work shows operators would have built at many of the chosen sites anyway, the case for spending £190 million on 15 to 25 sites weakens.

The SAU report and the CMA case page name none of the 15 to 25 service areas, give no date for site selection and say nothing on when upgrades would begin. Drivers have nothing to apply for, and the report sets no charging price. The numbers to watch are the final per-site cap, the final reservation period, whether OZEV adds a duty to build chargers, and which of the 116 service areas make the list.

Reviewed by Preetam Gadekar

Sources

• Competition and Markets Authority, Subsidy Advice Unit: Report on the Strategic Charging Infrastructure scheme referred by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, 4 November 2026
• Competition and Markets Authority: Referral of the proposed Strategic Charging Infrastructure Scheme by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles

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