EV charge points outnumber petrol stations in Japan

A survey by Nissan, and reported on by The Guardian, has shown that Japan now has more electric car charging points than petrol stations.

The Japanese automaker, manufacturer of the battery powered Leaf, has said that there are now over 40,000 charging points across the nation, compared with fewer than 35,000 petrol stations.

Japanese government subsidies for people buying electric, hybrid and other low-emission cars has spawned a network of public and private power points, making infrastructure in the Asian country far more developed than countries like the UK and US.

Critics of the survey have suggested that a large number of those charge points are privately owned and therefore, in some cases, used by a single owner. However, industry experts are suggesting that single-user charging stations will soon become a thing of the past with the emergence of technologies that allow private owners to share charging infrastructures with other drivers.