By Joe Pinkstone For Mailonline
Published: 09:56 BST, 1 April 2019 | Updated: 13:22 BST, 1 April 2019
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Petrol stations may soon be replaced with solar-powered forecourts fitted with 24 charging spaces where vehicles can top up their batteries.
More than 100 are planned alongside busy roads and will let most electric and hybrid vehicles fully charge in less than 30 minutes.
Some smaller cars with high-speed charging can be fully topped up in just ten minutes, developers claim.
'Airport-style' lounges will be built as part of the £1 billion ($1.31bn) project, to provide travellers with shops, toilets and cafes to pass the time as their cars refuel.
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More than 100 solar-powered forecourts are being planned alongside busy roads and will allow for all vehicles to be recharged in less than 30 minutes. 'Airport-style' lounges will provide travellers with shops, toilets and cafes to pass the time as their batteries recharge
Gridserve, a British firm based in Buckinghamshire, is behind the scheme and says more than 80 sites have already been confirmed, with more in the pipeline.
Construction at sites in York and Hull is expected to start before the end of 2019.
A lack of charging points, long-wait times and small ranges has limited the spread of electric cars and stunted their growth.
The government claims all new petrol and diesel cars will be emission-free by 2040 but critics have called this timeline overly ambitious.
Electric cars constitute only one per cent of all road vehicles but there are efforts to create infrastructure designed to make owning an electric car less arduous.
Toddington Harper, founder of Gridserve, says the forecourts and their familiar model to departure lounges and service stations would allow electric cars to become more commonplace.
He said: 'We plan to make
