Electric vehicles have been lauded as a silver bullet for many of today’s impending catastrophes. They could reduce harmful emissions and help to lessen the severity of climate change. Reduced emissions in our towns and cities could help to improve air quality and curtail the increase in respiratory illnesses we have seen in the past decade. They could even democratise the energy supply industry.
Even with all these potential benefits we are still waiting for the electric car revolution to start. The UK government has launched numerous policies in an attempt to push consumers towards electric cars. They have tried using the carrot as well as the stick. So far, neither approach has been successful.
The graph below shows the total electric vehicle ownership trend in the UK per quarter since 2012. After a slow start to the decade, the number of licensed vehicles increased sharply after 2014 to a rate of approximately 50,000 vehicles per year. Even with this acceleration, there are at present, a little over 150,000 electric vehicles on the road.
So, why aren’t consumers making the switch to electric vehicles?
Consumer choice
Each year there are around 4,000 new vehicles launched in the UK. These new vehicles range from small changes to existing models (e.g. improved sound system) to brand new models. This provides consumers with a lot of choice. Choice is an important factor when making buying decisions. It creates a feeling of control and security. Consumers will generally be drawn to options with a greater number of choices. It is no different when buying a car.
However, when it comes to electric vehicles, there are limited buying options. Manufacturers are producing few new models each year. The graph below shows the number of new electric cars released each year. 2014 saw the highest number of new electric cars launched in the UK. Since then, these numbers have dropped off.
40 to 60 new car launches each year might appear to offer some measure of consumer choice but compare this to petrol and diesel launches each year and the discrepancy is clear. The graph below compares the number of electric, petrol and diesel car launches each year. There have been approximately 2,500 new petrol cars launched and 1,600 new diesel cars launched in 2018. 40 to 60 times as many electric car launches.
Price
The adoption of new product into a market is usually driven by one of two factors. Either the product is better at fulfilling the consumers’ need than the alternatives, or is equally good but cheaper.
Whether electric vehicles provide a better driving experience than petrol or electric vehicles is subjective. But they are no better or worse at getting from A to B than petrol or diesel vehicles. Therefore, to gain market share, they need to be competitively priced. Unfortunately, this is not the case. For almost all types of electric car, the average price of electric vehicles is significantly higher than petrol or diesel vehicles.
This is demonstrated in the line graphs below. They show the average retail price of electric, petrol and diesel cars launched each year since 2009, broken down by car sector. Electric vehicles are more expensive in each sector, apart from the ‘Prestige Premier’. Although any consumer looking for a good deal will still have to fork out about £59,000.
Infrastructure
The Achilles heel of electric vehicles is the shorter range (relative to petrol and diesel vehicles). Consequently, they need to be “refilled” more often. There are only 16,500 charging points across the UK, and to make matters worse, they are not uniformly distributed. Therefore, some areas have better support for electric vehicles than others.
Is this lack of infrastructure restricting the adoption of electric vehicles? If this is the case, we would expect areas with better infrastructure to have a higher number of electric vehicles. As this map of electric charging points shows, higher populated regions have more charging points. Is this reflected in the electric vehicle adoption? Do higher populated regions have higher electric vehicle adoption?
The animation below show the electric vehicle ownership figures for each region in the UK since 2012. The South East of England leads the way in electric vehicle ownership, it is also the highest populated region in the UK. Northern Ireland and Wales have the lowest ownership of electric vehicles, but they are also the lowest populated regions in the UK. Interestingly, the North West of England is only ranked 6th for electric vehicle ownership but is the 2nd most populated region.
Relationship between electric vehicle ownership and population
We need to be careful what we infer from these animations. The higher ownership could simply be the result of the higher population. Below is a plot showing the relationship between electric vehicle ownership and region population. Each dot shows the total electric vehicle ownership and population for each region. The red line shows the expected electric vehicle ownership based on the region’s population size. Regions above the line have a higher than expected electric vehicle ownership, those below, lower than expected. The closer a region is to the line, the closer it is to expectations. The West Midlands and East of England far exceeds electric vehicle ownership expectations, whereas the North West of England fails to meet them. In fact, the North West of England has electric vehicle ownership figures like Scotland, a mostly rural region and 3 million less inhabitants.
Another way of looking at the relationship is to ignore the overall population figures and concentrate on the driving population. The scatter-plot below shows the relationship between electric vehicle ownership and overall vehicle ownership. The red dotted line shows the expected number of electric vehicles based on the total vehicle ownership within a region.
The West Midlands and East of England still exceed expectations and the North West of England still fails to meet them, but London now also exceeds expectations.
While population size is a factor in electric vehicle ownership, it is clearly not the only factor. If it were, the North West of England would have higher ownership figures than the West Midlands.
Electric vehicle hotspots
Drilling down a level, we can see that there are electric vehicle hot spots within regions. The animation below highlights this. The map of Great Britain has been split into sections based on local authority areas.. Each frame shows the total electric vehicle ownership per quarter since 2011. Different colours indicate different amounts. The legend on the right shows the colour scale, grey signifies 0 vehicles, red 15,000.
Most local authorities have between 200 and 2,000 electric vehicles by the end of June 2018 but there are a small number between 5,000 and 15,000. These 4 hot spots account for 35,000 electric vehicles (approximately 25% of all electric vehicles).
These local authorities account for a significant proportion of the electric vehicle ownership. The bar charts below show their effect. The first bar chart ranks the top 10 local authority areas by electric vehicle ownership at the end of 2018. The colour of the bar indicates the region. Birmingham (West Midlands) has by far, the highest number of electric vehicles, followed by Peterborough (East of England) and Milton Keynes and Slough (both South East of England).
The second bar chart shows the proportion of a regions total electric vehicles each local authority contributes. Birmingham makes up over 60% of the West Midlands electric vehicle ownership, Peterborough over 40% of the East of England and Milton Keynes and Slough about 35% of the South East of England.
