REVEALED: The UK’s electric vehicle numbers, ranked best to worst by town
As governments worldwide make moves to tackle the climate crisis, green transport is firmly at the top of the agenda.
In the UK, the government has recently announced that no new vans or cars wholly powered by petrol or diesel will be sold from 2030 onwards.
The clock is ticking, with less than nine years until the deadline, so we at Fleetcover wanted to find out how far down the road towns across Britain are in embracing the electric revolution.
We’ve explored data from the DVLA to find out which towns had the highest percentage of electric/hybrid vehicles, and which ones are the slowest off the starting line.
Unsurprisingly, the City of London is number one on the list, with 14.05% (405 out of a total of 2,282) of all its vehicles falling under the electric/hybrid category.
In fact, a total of four other areas from Greater London (Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Camden) all made the top 10.
Portsmouth, with 11.85% (15,349 out of 129,552), came a close second.
Top 10 UK towns with the Greenest Transport
- City of London (14.05%)
- Portsmouth, Hampshire (11.85%)
- Westminster, London (11.71%)
- Tower Hamlets, London (11.71%)
- Watford, Hertfordshire (11.65%)
- Hammersmith and Fulham, London (10.52%)
- Stockport, Greater Manchester (10.48%)
- Camden, London (9.94%)
- Slough, Berkshire (9.92%)
- Peterborough, Cambridgeshire (9.77%)
At the other end of the table, Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland comes at the bottom of all 386 towns across the whole of the UK, with just 0.74% (805 out of 106,878) of all vehicles registered falling under the electric/hybrid category.
Barrow-In-Furness came bottom in England, with 1.07% (390 out of 36,382).
Top 10 UK Towns with the least green transport
- Mid Ulster, Northern Ireland (0.74%)
- Blaenau Gwent, Wales (0.79%)
- Fermanagh and Omagh, Northern Ireland (0.83%)
- Merthyr Tydfil, Wales (0.84%)
- Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Scotland (0.86%)
- Causeway Coast and Glens, Northern Ireland (0.91%)
- Newry, Mourne and Down, Northern Ireland (1.02%)
- Derry City and Strabane, Northern Ireland (1.03%)
- Barrow-In-Furness, Cumbria (1.07%)
- Darlington, Durham (1.10%)
Philip Wall, Director of Fleetcover, said: “We’ve got a long way to go in 9 years judging from these figures, notwithstanding the running down of the existing petrol/diesel powered vehicles post 2030.
“It’s unsurprising that London has the highest proportion of electric vehicles, mainly due to the congestion fee exemption. Such schemes in other cities in the future should escalate electric vehicle ownership in due course, as would investment in more electric charging infrastructure across the country.
“Electric vehicles can be more expensive to insure due to the specialist nature and therefore the cost of repairs required. This may be a deterrent for some people, but as electric vehicles become more commonplace, the garage repair network will have to evolve too, which in turn should bring vehicle repair costs down.”
