APPARENTLY, we are “a nation of drivers”. Tell that to my mum, who has an electric car.

Last week, as my family was driving to catch the ferry to Bute, we stopped to charge at the westbound M8 Harthill Services. My mum’s Nissan Leaf runs around 85 miles on a full charge but motorways quickly run down the battery.

The bank of BP Pulse chargers at Harthill was lit up like a blue spaceship, alongside a large sign that read “ultra-fast charging hub”. Great, we thought. We won’t be here longer than 20 minutes.

The machine said no. The next machine said “insert card” when there was nowhere to insert a card. The next machine beeped and did nothing. The next machine got very passive-aggressive.

A man in an electric Mini pulled up and watched us. “I thought this would be a bad idea,” he said.

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I phoned the BP helpline, and a woman asked us to wait while she rebooted the machines, one by one.

I asked how long would it take for an engineer to come out?

“Several days,” she replied. Something about prioritising the hospitals. Something made me picture just one harried engineer, running around Scotland. And probably in a petrol van. I wonder what he/she thinks of the Government touting electric vehicles (EVs) as the silver bullet to tackling climate change.

The operator suggested we try the other bank of BP chargers on the eastbound services. “Are any of them working?” I asked.

“There’s nothing to indicate they aren’t working,” she replied.

After this riddle, the helpline operator suggested I could download the app. It was very glitchy. It asked me to log in when I hadn’t even created an account, then accused me of forgetting a password I didn’t have.

The app told me the electricity was 100% renewable, which you must admit is good news, even if you can’t access it. When the blue “charging” lights on the Nissan dashboard started to blink, my mum and I did a wee dance. Onwards and upwards.

When we got to Wemyss Bay, the trains from Glasgow Central were “on time” and everyone getting off the train looked very happy. It was a strong reminder of the value of public transport.

In Bute, we found that the two chargers on the entire island were out of service.

There are 2672 EV charging points currently listed in an Excel file on ChargePlace Scotland’s website. The “out of service list” included around 33 – last updated on September 21. Another list showed “non-communicative units” i.e. chargers that may be working but the supplier hasn’t been in touch to confirm, and by the time they get in touch to say they are, they probably aren’t.

Those two latter lists did not include the two, sad-looking chargers in Bute or the blue passive-aggressive spaceship at Harthill.

Our experience illustrates authorities’ overall approach to climate change – half-hearted, piecemeal, chaotic. There are more than three million cars registered in Scotland, an all-time high.

The picture is worse in England. It’s no wonder Westminster is pushing back the 2030 ban on new petrol cars – the infrastructure will simply not be ready.

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EVs are not emission-free, either, due to the very small particles in tyre and brake dust that can enter our lungs and bloodstreams. EVs do not solve congestion on our roads, or tackle dangerous driving, of which we are seeing more and more.

We need to invest heavily in public transport and Labour should get on board with this rather than competing with the Tories as to who is the real friend to drivers.

When we finally arrived at our beautiful holiday cottage, it had everything you could wish for. A garlic crusher. A coffee machine. Local shortbread. A golf umbrella. Walking poles. Even an electric charging point in the driveway.

Unfortunately, it was the wrong type of connector for the Nissan Leaf. Luckily, my mum had thought to bring her own.