A lot of reports have made much of the fact that a few London boroughs have more chargers than several large metropolitan areas in the Midlands and the North. This makes great copy but overlooks that London has a lot more EVs than other cities, and very few driveways. In fact the chart above shows that public charge points are increasing steeply everywhere. Annual growth in chargepoint numbers in 2023 was 45%.

Purchase price parity for EVs has variously been tipped to be achieved in Europe in 2024 by Exeter University, 2025 according to Goldman Sachs, the mid-2020s according to the International Energy Agency or 2030 according to the CEO of Ford. But sometimes it is worth looking up from down the road, and at what we can see for certain: how much EVs cost - and can save - consumers right now.

The total number of battery electric cars on UK roads at the end of 2023 just missed the 1 million mark. This milestone came just into 2024, meaning BEVs now account for approximately 3% of the total car parc in the UK. Although a record number of motorists switched to electrified transport over the year, there is a mountain to climb before this starts to drastically affect the car parc’s overall makeup. We estimate that this number will grow further - to 1.2 to 1.3 million, approaching 4% - by the end of 2024.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day”, which is a pretentious way of saying that sometimes the sound and fury of monthly EV sales figures and their selective dissection sometimes signifies nothing. Or if not quite nothing - after all, that’s why New AutoMotive produces its monthly Electric Car Count, Electric Van Count and all new Global EV Tracker - you can still risk losing the site of the bigger picture.

As our State of the Switch report 2024 shows, 2023 saw a record number of battery electric vehicles registered in the UK, in a period of growth for the whole car market. The total number of EVs registered in the UK over 2023 was 297,890. This is 18.5% higher than the number registered in 2022 which stood at 251,406.