Sat, May 31, 2025
2 min read
Elite-level public EV charging.
Don’t be put off by a bad public EV charging experience in the UK. It is significantly better on the continent, more ubiquitous and cheaper. Things are much smoother the other side of the channel.
The Netherlands has elite-level public EV charging infrastructure. There are so many chargers that the Electroverse app lags and struggles to display them all. A nice problem to have.
The European comparison section at the end of this report shows things clearly. The UK lags behind France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands, whether you measure charge points absolutely or per capita. Belgium and The Netherlands, in particular, are far smaller than the UK with much lower populations and yet both have more charge points than the UK (The Netherlands has more than twice as many as the UK). Scandinavia also scores highly.
TL;DR: get an Electroverse card (referral link) and optionally link it to your Octopus Energy account (referral link) so it gets added to your bill.
We also lease our EV from Octopus EV (referral code: 487365JS). If you link these all together than you can get lots of reciprocal benefits (for example public charging credit and discounts).
We’d been before in the old Nissan Leaf to the Baarle/Tilburg area near the (very complex) Belgian border and taken the train to Utrecht. This time we headed further North and hugged the coast.
We took the Eurotunnel (naturally) and went straight through France and Belgium (so won’t cover them here). We’ve been to these many times before in an EV (maybe one for another post).
Length of stay - 24th to 27th May (3 days)
Places stayed - Terneuzen, Alkmaar
Currency - Euro
Power socket - Type F / Euro plug
Public EV charging infra - elite-level A++