Hyundai, Toyota EV ads banned in UK over misleading charge speed claims

Carmakers often come up with new electric offerings and boast of their charging capabilities. Toyota claims that its bZ4X SUV can be juiced up to 80 per cent in around 30 minutes using a 150 kW charger while Hyundai claims that its Ioniq 5 takes 18 minutes to charge to full using a 350 kW supply. But are those figures valid in real-life conditions?

When both these carmakers advertised their respective models in the UK with their claimed charging capabilities, the country's advertising watchdog, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), did not buy the facts. Both Toyota and Hyundai have been forced to stop running certain advertisements in the UK and Ireland over misleading customers about charging times and the true availability of high-speed charging stations.

The action of banning the ads came after the ASA investigated some complaints lodged by EV users that the charging times quoted in the ad spots didn’t align with the real-world figures and that access to quick chargers was less widespread than claimed. When questioned, both the firms admitted that these figures were achieved in ideal conditions.

The ASA ruled that multiple other factors such as the age and condition of a battery, battery temperature, and ambient temperature could affect the real charge times of such vehicles, most likely making them even longer than expected.

The ASA also questioned Toyota's claim about easily finding fast chargers in the UK. Toyota's ad claimed that drivers could 'easily find rapid-charging points in a number of public locations". While there were 419 chargers capable of outputting 150 kW, they were in only 134 locations across the UK, with only seven located in Scotland and two in Wales whereas Northern Ireland had none.

In case of Hyundai, its own Charge myHyundai website showed only 37 ultra-quick chargers are available in the UK, with only six of those in the Republic of Ireland and again, and none on the other side of the Irish border.