Britain’s transition to electric vehicles looks increasingly like a two-speed revolution as uptake is far faster in leafy boroughs than in low-income areas.
Analysis has found that motorists in the richest fifth of local authority areas are 35 to 40 per cent more likely to be driving an electric car than those in the poorest fifth. In the most affluent areas, adoption rates are eight times higher than the most deprived communities.
In Britain’s richest borough, Kensington and Chelsea in west London, 6.5 per cent of privately owned vehicles are electric, compared with only 0.8 per cent in Blaenau Gwent in south Wales.
The analysis suggests that government subsidies to lower the price of electric vehicles are disproportionately benefiting the better-off.
In July last year ministers committed £650 million for an electric car grant, which gives buyers up to £3,750 off qualifying cars priced at £37,000 or less.
Two factors appear to be driving the disparity. First, electric cars are typically more expensive to buy, with an average premium of between 15 and 25 per cent on a broadly equivalent petrol or diesel model. Second, homes in wealthier areas are more likely to have driveways and garages where residents can charge their vehicles. At-home charging is up to ten times cheaper than public charging.
• What we can learn from Norway’s electric car revolution
The analysis, which is based on publicly available data from 343 local authorities, also shows that the poorest areas are under-served with public chargers relative to the most affluent boroughs. The richest fifth of council areas have, on average, 151 public chargers per 100,000 people, compared with about 101 per 100,000 in the poorest fifth.
London has more than double the national average number of public chargers per person
ALAMY
This average masks even greater variations between some areas. In the London borough of Merton there are 405 public chargers per 100,000 people, compared with only 52 in Hartlepool.
Department for Transport data shows that London has 301 public charging devices per 100,000 people, far above the UK average of 127.
The figures land at a delicate moment for both the government and the car industry as they try to move electric vehicles from an early-adopter market into the mainstream. There are 1.85 million fully electric vehicles in Britain but this only represents about 5 per cent of the approximately 34 million cars on the road. If electric cars are to become truly mainstream, the next wave of drivers will have to be flat-dwellers, renters and families with no private driveways, all of whom will be dependent on public chargers.
Experts say that an uneven distribution of chargers is likely to hamper government plans to transition to zero-emission vehicles because it will deter many motorists from making the switch to electric.
• Nearly one in three cars sold in UK in December were all-electric
Ministers have committed to phase out the sale of new cars that rely solely on internal combustion engines from 2030. Yet in some areas, such as Blaenau Gwent, more than 99 out of every 100 cars are still reliant on petrol or diesel.
Asif Ghafoor, the chief executive of Be.EV, the charging company that conducted the research, said the country had reached a “critical juncture” in the transition to electric vehicles. He said: “We are at the point in the adoption curve where we must pull all levers available to push us into mass adoption, and that means helping those on lower incomes towards ownership. In practical terms that means making public EV charging as affordable and accessible as possible in areas where people live in flats and public charging is limited.”
He added that while Be.EV had “historically and will continue to invest in poorer areas”, there was “little incentive for other providers to do so”, because demand was uncertain and margins tight.
• Can’t charge an electric car at home? Then petrol may be cheaper
The Treasury has reportedly been examining whether to cut VAT on public charging to match the lower domestic rate, a move that would, in effect, scrap what critics call the “pavement tax”.
Ghafoor said: “There are measures the government can take to address this and make the UK more investable, like harmonising VAT on public and private charging and giving us clarity on business rates on our sites,” he said, arguing that policy uncertainty raised the risk of investment in lower-return locations.
