EV charging and vehicle providers are calling on the government to make charge points more clearly signposted, including rapid chargers, on-street and residential charging.
InstaVolt, Chargy, Electric Vehicles UK and Octopus Electric Vehicles have said that EV charging should be treated equally with petrol in national road sign regulations, with clear, consistent signage rolled out across motorways, A-roads and residential streets.
InstaVolt’s 2025 consumer polling found that more than half of drivers actively look for roadside signs to find EV chargers, and nearly nine in 10 say clear physical signage is important to them.
Delvin Lane, CEO of InstaVolt, explained: “Right now, EV charging locations are treated very differently to petrol stations in the rules that govern road signs. That means thousands of high-quality public chargers are installed, operating, but not obviously signposted from key routes.
“If we want drivers to feel confident going electric, that has to change.”
The firms are urging government, National Highways and local authorities to put EV charging on an equal footing with fuel in the road sign regulations. They also want to make it easier for councils to add EV charging to existing direction signs where hubs already exist.
“This is a low-cost, high-impact intervention,” said Lane. “Better signage increases use of the chargers we already have, and sends a powerful public signal that the UK’s charging network is real, reliable and ready today.”
Recent research from the Department for Transport (DfT) suggests that there are now considerably more public EV chargers than fuel pumps in the UK.
