Carmakers are under increasing pressure to sell more electric and hybrid cars to meet tougher emissions regulations. In the UK, the government recently accelerated plans to ban new gasoline and diesel car sales from 2040 to 2030. But as a couple in Kent, England, discovered, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to improve the electric car charging infrastructure and reduce consumer range anxiety. Speaking with The Guardian, Linda Barnes and her husband explain how it took over nine hours to travel 130 miles to their home from Bournemouth, England because they couldn't find a working charger that could produce enough power for their Porsche Taycan 4S.

In the US, the Porsche Taycan 4S offers an EPA-rated driving range of 203 miles. Using an ultra-fast 800-volt charging station, it takes just 22 minutes to charge the Taycan 4S from five- to 80 percent, but these aren't easy to find.

Using a 7.4-kW home charge point, it takes around 11 hours to fully charge the Taycan 4S. But Barnes and her husband found it extremely difficult to track down a working public fast-charging station. With 45 miles of range left, the Taycan's navigation directed the couple to the nearest fast charger. They plugged it in, but nothing happened. A parking attendant then told them the charging station had been "out of action for weeks." After using a slow charger at a nearby Porsche garage, they were able to reach the next highway rest area to try another fast charger. Here, someone advised them that they only managed to get the charging station working by calling a helpline - but the call center was about to close.

They were then faced with a lengthy queue to use a 7-kW slow charger. While it was working, it had a "distinctly unhelpful" 45-minute time limit. Another driver told them a nearby hotel had charging points, but the staff couldn't advise if they were working when they phoned them.

As their search continued, they finally found a working fast charger at another highway rest area. There was a catch, however: they were all Tesla chargers. Thankfully, they found an available fast charger and were able to get home with only 11 percent charge left. "We ran through the entire gamut of emotions in those nine hours - resignation, range anxiety, annoyance and disbelief that this was happening - and finally elation when we realized we'd get home," Barnes recalled.

After returning home, the couple discovered that several local public charging points were also not working. Clearly, the UK government needs to do more to improve the charging infrastructure and make fast chargers more easily accessible to accommodate the upcoming electric car revolution.