Sunday, July 30, 2023

Electric vehicle take-up in the UK

Having just got back from the UK, and having commented while there about how it didn't seem very EV-friendly, it was interesting to come across this article in the Yorkshire Evening Post (that hot-bed of radicalism) about owning an electric vehicle in the UK.

Apparently, there are more public EV charging points than petrol (gas) stations in the UK, some 44,408 in 25,521 locations, a number that has increased by 36% in the last year alone. Maybe they are just better hidden than here (or perhaps concentrated in the affluent south).

The other statistic that surprised me is the number of UK households that have access to off-street parking (and therefore relatively easy EV charging), which the YEP puts at 70%. Our experience is of narrow streets packed with parked cars on both sides of the street with barely enough room to navigate a car between them. Who knew? Maybe that's an affluent south thing too?

According to Fleet News, there are a,bout 1.1 million EVs in the UK, about 3.1% of the total, up by over 50% in the last year alone. 16.6% of all new cars in the UK were electric in 2022, plus an additional 6.3% being plug-in hybrids (total 22.9%). This compares with just 152,685 fully electric cars on Canada, (about 1.6% of all cars on the road) with just 7.7% of all new cars being electric last year. We have about 15,000 charging stations in Canada.

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