My commute to work took three times longer than usual because of my electric car… I had to change in a Tesco toilet

One mother’s commute to work took three times longer than usual because she couldn’t find a place to charge her electric car.

Sophie Preston-Hall spent 12 hours traveling from Essex to Blackpool as there were almost no available power sockets en route.

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The robbery delayed her so much that she had to go to a Tesco toilet and ask a stranger to zip her dress.

The businesswoman, 49, who drove to an awards ceremony, recounted MailOnline: “I have made the trip many times.

“It should have taken about four and a half hours. Instead, it took almost 12.”

Sophie set out for Lancashire knowing she would have to stop at some point along the 270-mile route to charge her all-electric BMW i3.

The car is advertised as having a range of 180 miles, but the mother-of-one estimates it’s closer to 150, or even less if you turn on the heater or try to mist up your windows.

But what Sophie didn’t anticipate was that she couldn’t find anything anywhere without a long queue.

When she arrived at her carefully planned stop at a Midlands petrol station, she found all the electrical chargers were either used or broken.

Looking for alternatives, she made three more stops but still had no luck.

With just two miles left on the clock, she finally found an available outlet in a Birmingham garage.

But she ended up being an hour and a half late for the work event and had to change in a Tesco toilet.

Sophie, who runs staffing agency Catering Elite, described the lack of available charging points across the UK as “an absolute joke”.

She added: “It’s happened to me time and time again – you find a spot with a charger and you have to queue.

“I’m British, I don’t mind standing in line, but all too often when it’s your turn to use the charger, it doesn’t work.

“The infrastructure to support electric cars is not yet available in this country.”

There are around 35,000 public electric vehicle charging points in the UK, of which 6,395 are ‘fast’ devices and 19,746 are ‘fast’ devices.

The government pledged to install 300,000 new ones by 2030 if sales of new all-petrol or diesel cars are banned.

Figures from Zap Map show that 8,700 public charging stations have been installed in the last 12 months.

That’s a 30 percent increase from a year earlier, but slower than the 38 percent annual growth in electric car sales.

This means ministers may miss their target if annual installations don’t more than double by 2025 and accelerate from there.