26 Statistics About Electric Vehicles in the UK [Updated Oct 2020]

In this article, we’ve analysed all of the publicly available data about electric vehicle usage in the UK to come up with 50 useful statistics that we think you’ll find interesting.

Most of the data we have used is provided by the UK government, however we have also used Deloitte market reports and other reputable insights. All of the data sources are provided at the end.

Stats last checked and updated: October 2020

How Many Electric Cars Are There in the UK?

As of Q2 2020, there were 295,243 ultra low emission cars in the UK.

The average cost of buying a new electric or hybrid car in the UK is £49,377.¹

Of these ultra low emission cars, 119,912 (40.6%) were battery electric and 175,513 (59.4%) were hybrid or other low emission cars.

The number of battery electric cars registered in the UK rose by 79.8% in Q2 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

The number of hybrid and other ultra low emission cars registered in the UK rose by 22.6% in Q2 2020 compared to the same period last year.

The following graph shows the growth of battery electric and hybrid/other ULEV cars in the UK since 2010:

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Electric Cars in the UK vs Other Countries

The UK is the fifth biggest market for electric vehicles in the world.

The biggest EV market is China which sold almost 1.2m plug in electric vehicles in 2019, compared to the UK’s 297,000 during the same period.

As well as consumer sales, China is at the forefront of electric vehicle car sharing. Its main car sharing service, EVCard, has 6,000 cars in Shanghai alone, and over 1.2million subscribers.

In the United States, Tesla are responsible for more than 50% of the country’s electric vehicle output.

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Most Popular Electric Cars in the UK

As of Q2 2020, the Mitsubishi Outlander was the most popular electric car in the UK with 45,674 registered vehicles on the road.

Here is an infographic showing the full top 20:

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Public EV Charge Points

There are 18,265 electric vehicle charge points available for public use in the UK (as of July 2020)

This graph shows the growth of public electric vehicle charging points in the UK between 2015 and 2020:

The same data shows that 28% (5,151) of the UK’s electric vehicle charge points are in London

The regions of the UK with the highest number of electric vehicles charging point per head of population are:

Local Authority / Region Name	Total public charging devices	Charging devices per 100,000 population
Cumbria	183	187.2
Inner London	2933	80.7
Outer London	2918	41.6
Tyne and Wear (Met County)	387	33.9
Oxfordshire	227	32.8

The regions of the UK with the lowest number of electric vehicles charging point per head of population are:

Local Authority / Region Name	Total public charging devices	Charging devices per 100,000 population
Essex	200	13.4
Staffordshire	124	14.1
Somerset	116	14.5
East Sussex	84	15.1
Derbyshire	124	15.4

In the 2020 Global Auto Consumer Study, Deloitte found that ‘Lack of electric vehicle charging infrastructure’ was the public biggest concern regarding electric vehicles, with 33% of consumers saying it was a factor.

Tesla’s Supercharger network charges at either 120 kW or 150 kW making it the fastest EV charging network in the UK

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Stats About Charging Electric Vehicles at Home

The cost of installing an electric vehicle charge point at home is around £1000

The UK governments homecharge scheme provides up to 75% of funding for installing a charge point at home. There are currently 460 models of electric vehicle eligible for the scheme.

As of December 2018, the government claims to have supported the installation of more than 60,000 residential charging points through the homecharge scheme.

The average cost of charging an electric vehicle at home in the UK is £296.23 per year.²

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Statistics about the Future of Electric Vehicles

Whilst there’s no doubt that the number of EV’s on the road will grow, it’s hard to predict the exact number. We’ve gathered some stats about how the market might look in the future:

Deloitte predicts that global sales of electric vehicles will be as follows:

• 2020: 2.5 million
• 2025: 11.2 million
• 2030: 31.1million

In this prediction, Electric vehicles would make up 32% of global sales of new cars.

The UK government’s target is for at least 50% and as many as 70% of new car sales to be ultra low emission vehicles by 2030. As of 2017 it was 1.8%.

According to Google trends, interest in electric cars in the UK rose steadily over the past five years until it plummeted to a 2 year low in March 2020 as the world went in to lock down. It has since recovered although not to the same levels.

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Notes

¹ Cost of a new ULEV in the UK was calculated using the UK governments top 20 ultra low emission registrations by vehicle between Jul 2019-Jun 2020, and the average cost of those vehicles from Parkers)

² We calculated the cost of charging an EV at home using the governments average milage of personal cars in the UK at 7,200 in 2019, the UK’s average electricity cost of 14.4p per kWh and EDFs calculation that on average 1 kWh equals 3.5 miles.

Sources:

• UK Government Vehicle Registration Dataset
• News article – Electric Car Sales in China
• EV Card Wikipedia Page
• UK Government Road-to-Zero Industrial Strategy
• UK Government EV Charge Point Briefing
• Deloitte Electric Vehicles 2030 Report
• UK Government EV Charge Point Stats
• EDF Energy Electric Car Costs
• UK Government Vehicle Mileage Dataset
• Google Trends