Gridserve has officially opened what it calls the first public electric HGV charging hubs in the country, the first two of seven planned for 2026. 

The new charging hubs are at Baldock services on junction 10 of the A1M and at Exeter services on junction 30 of the M5. The Baldock hub has six dedicated charging bays for lorries, while the Exeter location has four. Both areas have been specially designed so that drivers can manoeuvre safely to the plugs from their high driving positions. 

To mark the occasion Gridserve sent a DAF XF Electric e-truck between the two locations, the 225-mile journey well within the lorry’s 310-mile range. Just over 400 electric lorries were registered in the UK in the first three quarters of 2025.

Gridserve is working as part of a consortium of companies to put together the so-called ‘Electric Freightway’, which aims to install hundreds of ultra-rapid chargers across the UK road network and for 140 eHGVs to hit the roads by 2030. Over £100m is being pumped into the effort, with the majority of the cash coming from the UK government. 

​Gridserve CEO Daniel Kunkel said: “With the help of our consortium partners, we’re now proving that electric HGVs can run real routes at real scale, using shared public infrastructure.” The company now plans to open further eHGV charging hubs this year at Tamworth, Thurrock, Leeds, Chester and Strensham North service stations. 

The new charging hubs come as LeShuttle has completed safety protocols for eHGV crossings, with the first electric truck passing through the tunnel at the end of last week. 

The company says that the market for eHGVs on its cross-Channel trains was currently very small, but it expects 50,000 crossings within five years. That’s within the context of 2.2 million passenger vehicle and 1.1 million freight vehicle crossings that the company facilitated in 2025.