Friday 22 May 2026 2:39 pm

The road to growth: Why motorway services are key to EV revolution

By: Tim Gittins

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Motorway services will be central to the EV transition, but urgent action is needed to unlock grid capacity, writes Tim Gittins

The UK has now passed a significant milestone with more than 2m electric vehicles on the road. It is a powerful signal of the pace at which transport is changing, and of the scale of the challenge now facing policymakers and industry alike in ensuring the infrastructure exists to support that transition at pace in practice, not just in principle.

Since the opening of Watford Gap in 1959, the UK’s first motorway service area (MSA), motorway services have continually adapted to meet the needs of a growing and increasingly mobile nation, supporting long-distance travel, improving road safety and ensuring the drivers delivering goods we all rely on have places to stop and rest, quietly underpinning the UK’s logistics network. Today, as the government prioritises economic growth, accelerates housebuilding and pushes forward with transport decarbonisation, the role of motorway services is evolving once again, becoming far more central to the delivery of those ambitions.

At Roadchef, we operate sites that serve millions of motorists each year, but their significance extends well beyond convenience. Motorway service areas are a form of critical national infrastructure – as well as providing drivers with safe........

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