State of the Switch 2021

EXCERPT

We are going to see a revolution in how we travel in the UK during the 2020s as electric vehicles (EVs) increasingly replace vehicles powered by burning diesel and petrol. This transition will take many years to complete and there will be a number of milestones along the way, notably the planned date for ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030.

At New AutoMotive we are unashamedly in favour of this revolution taking place, and we hope that through our work we can help it to progress more quickly and smoothly than might otherwise be the case.

As we have worked to collect information about electric vehicles over the past year we have found that the data sources can be quite scattered and not always easy to interpret. We thought it would be helpful if we create a summary of all of the relevant data that we have pulled together into a single report that provides a snapshot of the ‘State of the Switch’ in October 2021. We will produce this report annually and to set out how the transition is progressing, any areas that are holding it back, or indeed accelerating it.

In this first report we will look at six different aspects of the switch - the ratio of electric to internal combustion miles travelled, the number of electric vehicles on UK roads, trends in new car sales, vehicle ownership costs, growth in the charging infrastructure, and public policy developments.