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EV Charger Site Finder

The EV charger site finder ranks places in an area of England for new public chargepoints. It favours streets where households have a car but probably no driveway, far from chargers mapped in OpenStreetMap and with passing traffic, and rules out flood zone 3, protected land and spots away from a public road. Each place shows why it scored well.

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This site shows real example runs made with the Bozmaps engine. For your own places, ask for a site report.
The EV charger site finder for Hyson Green, Nottingham, example run of 9 November 2026: 100 m cells shaded by score inside a 1.5 km circle, ruled-out cells in grey, public chargers mapped in OpenStreetMap as dots and 10 numbered candidate places, beside the list of example runs.

What You Give It

  • A place: a postcode, or an area drawn on a map or uploaded. The usual search is 1.5 km around it, up to 5 km, and at most 150 km² at a time.
  • How much each criterion matters, from 0 (ignore) to 5: homes with a car but probably no driveway, households with a car or van, terraced homes, distance from existing chargers, passing traffic, fair access and a public car park nearby.
  • Which flood zones to rule out, whether to rule out nature and heritage designations, the distance from a charger that earns full marks (800 m as usual), how many places to list (10 as usual) and how far apart they must be (400 m as usual).

What You Get

  • Ranked Candidate Places

    Each with its score from 0 to 1, a grid reference, the nearest road, the distance to the nearest mapped charger, the households with a car living in flats in its census area, and the traffic at the busiest nearby count point with its year.

  • How Firm the Ranking Is

    Whether each place stays in the top 3 over 500 runs with every weight moved at random by up to 20%.

  • The Council's Official Count

    The Department for Transport's count of public chargers in the council area, per 100,000 people and how many are rapid (50 kW or more), beside the chargers OpenStreetMap shows in the search area.

  • A Score Map and a Full Report

    Every cell shaded by score, ruled-out land, mapped chargers and the numbered places, with the method, limits and sources.

How It Works

The EV finder uses the site finder's method with criteria for charging. The search area is split into 100 m cells. Each cell is scored from 0 to 1 on each criterion, the scores are weighted and added, and the best cells at least 400 m apart become the candidate places, so the list is spread over the area instead of ten cells side by side.

With the usual weights, homes without driveways count for 33%, the gap from existing chargers 22% and each of the others 11%.
CriterionUsual weightHow it is scored
Homes with a car but probably no driveway3Households with a car or van living in a flat (Census 2021), per hectare of their census area; 1 for the densest 5% of the search area
Households with a car or van1Per hectare of their census area; 1 for the densest 5%
Terraced homes1Terraced households per hectare, a second, weaker sign of no off-street parking; 1 for the densest 5%
Distance from existing chargers2Straight line to the nearest public charging station in OpenStreetMap: 0 next to one, 1 at 800 m or more
Passing traffic1The busiest Department for Transport count point within 300 m, motorways left out: 0 under 1,000 vehicles a day, 1 at 30,000 or more, on a log scale
Fair access1The neighbourhood's decile in the English Indices of Deprivation 2025; more deprived scores higher unless you choose otherwise
Public car park nearby01 within 100 m of a public car park in OpenStreetMap, 0 at 400 m or more

Ruled out: cells in flood zone 3 (or zones 2 and 3, if you choose), cells inside nature and heritage designations, and cells more than 60 m from a public road in the OpenStreetMap drive network.

Hyson Green, Nottingham

In the example run of 9 November 2026, 708 cells of 100 m covered 1.5 km around NG7 6LB and 77 (11%) were ruled out, 68 of them for having no public road within 60 m. OpenStreetMap showed 5 public charging stations in the area; the Department for Transport counted 511 public chargers across Nottingham on 1 July 2026, 154 per 100,000 people. The top place, on or near Burford Road, scored 0.90 out of 1: 1,000 m from the nearest mapped charger, with 34 households with a car living in flats in its census area and 17,843 vehicles a day on the A6130 (2025). It stayed in the top 3 in all 500 test runs.

Open this example

The Data Behind It

Every dataset and its credit line is on data sources and licences.

What It Can't Tell You

  • A screening of where to look, not a site survey: electricity network capacity, kerb space, parking rules, pavement width, land ownership and planning consent are not checked.
  • Existing chargers are those mapped in OpenStreetMap, which usually misses some: there has been no free national list of chargepoint locations since the National Chargepoint Registry closed in November 2024. The council's official total from the Department for Transport is shown alongside.
  • Traffic counts cover major roads every year but minor roads only at sample points, so quiet residential streets mostly score 0 on traffic. Each figure shows its year.
  • 'No driveway' is estimated from homes that are flats, because no open dataset records off-street parking for each home. Census 2021 describes March 2021.
  • England only for designations and deprivation; the Census figures also cover Wales.
  • In the three example runs on the public site, nature and heritage designations were not checked: the national Planning Data service was not answering when they were made.

The tools are in preview: built and tested, not yet signed off as validated. They screen a place from public data and don't replace a survey or professional advice.

Questions

Something else? Ask us.

How do you know which homes have no driveway?

No open dataset records off-street parking for each home, so the finder uses the next best sign in Census 2021: households with a car or van who live in a flat. Terraced homes are a second, weaker sign, with a lower weight.

Why use OpenStreetMap for existing chargers?

Because there has been no free national list of chargepoint locations since the National Chargepoint Registry closed in November 2024. OpenStreetMap usually misses some chargers, so each result also shows the Department for Transport's official count for the council.

Can I change the weights?

Yes, in a run on the Bozmaps engine: each criterion from 0 to 5, plus the exclusions, the number of places and their spacing. The public site shows three example runs, for Hyson Green in Nottingham, Spinney Hills in Leicester and Arboretum in Derby, made with the usual weights.

Does it check grid capacity or parking rules?

No. Electricity network capacity, kerb space, parking rules, pavement width, land ownership and planning consent all need checking on the ground and with the network operator. The finder tells you where to look first.

Can you run it for my area?

Yes. Tell us the place and the weights you want and we run it on the engine and send the ranked places with the full report.

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