UK government vows 10-fold increase in electric car chargers by 2030

There are only about 30,000 public charging points in the UK to service 420,000 pure-electric vehicles. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The UK government has set a new target to increase the number of electric car chargers more than ten times to 300,000 by 2030 after heavy criticism that the rollout of public infrastructure is too slow to match rapid growth in sales.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said it would invest an extra £450m to do so, alongside hefty sums of private capital. Sales of new cars and vans with petrol and diesel engines will be banned from 2030.