UK’s top electric car hotspots revealed

The top UK towns and cities where electric car demand has increased quicker than anywhere else in the country have been revealed.

With electric car interest increasing more with each passing month, some cities have experienced a six-fold increase in the number of new electric car registrations.

A freedom of information request submitted by comparison site Motorway.co.uk to the DVLA in January 2020 found that Birmingham has seen the fastest growth in new car electric ownership than any other town or city in the UK.

In fact, there were 2,192 new electric cars registered in the city up to the end of September 2019, in contrast to the 340 vehicles for the corresponding period in 2018 – representing an increase of 527 per cent. It’s also a growth which is five times the UK average.

Only Doncaster came close to the increase experienced in Birmingham, which saw an increase of 500 per cent in the registrations of plug-in electric cars in 2019 compared with 2018.

However, London came out on top when it came to the outright number of electric cars on the road, with 3,308 registrations made up to the end of September 2019 – an increase of 95 per cent compared to the period for 2018.

Scotland and Wales both saw electric car registration increases of 126 per cent, while England experienced a 117 per cent rise in 2019 compared with 2018. There were 22,469 new electric cars registered by the DVLA in England alone during the first nine months of 2019.

However, some areas saw a decrease in the number of electric cars registered. Bedford experienced a 78.1 per cent fall, while registrations in Stratford-upon-Avon fell by 47.8 per cent between 2018 and the end of September 2019.