Peterborough has been revealed as the UK’s top local authority for electric car ownership as a proportion of all cars on local roads, with roughly one in 20 of vehicles in the city registered as being fully electric.
The city in the east of England has 217,280 registered vehicles, of which 11,450 - or 5.27 per cent - are fully electric. Second is the Forest of Dean, where 2,981 out of 65,170 vehicles (4.57 per cent) are electric, followed by Slough where the proportion is 8,470 out of 245,560 (3.45 per cent).
The figures - which come from Department for Transport statistics, analysed by Compare the Market - also show that local authorities in Northern Ireland and Wales tend to have the lowest proportion of electric vehicles.
In terms of sheer numbers, London and Birmingham have the highest total number of electric vehicles. London is particularly ahead of the game in terms of proportions - 1.09 per cent of vehicles there are electrified, compared with 0.71 per cent in the UK as a whole.
The City of London, Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea are the three London boroughs with the highest percentage of electric vehicles.
Dan Hutson, head of motor insurance at Compare the Market, commented: “Not so long ago, the number of electric vehicles on the road was a lot smaller. The UK didn’t have the infrastructure in place and many people considered switching to electric as too expensive.
“It's great to see that in a relatively short amount of time, this has started to turn and the UK is well on its way to achieving the Government's targets of going electric and banning the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035. With almost a quarter of a million EVs on UK roads, and the number rising constantly, the UK is becoming a nation of more eco-conscious and ‘greener’ motorists.”
UK EV hotspots: where are electric cars most popular?
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Local authority
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Total vehicles | EVs | EVs as a percentage |
| Peterborough | 217,280 | 11,450 | 5.27 per cent |
| Forest of Dean | 65,170 | 2,981 | 4.57 per cent |
| Slough | 245,560 | 8,470 | 3.45 per cent |
| Birmingham | 796,070 | 18,988 | 2.39 per cent |
| Renfrewshire | 139,070 | 3,089 | 2.22 per cent |
| Watford | 67,620 | 1,444 | 2.14 per cent |
| Isles of Scilly | 950 | 18 | 1.89 per cent |
| Stirling | 69,850 | 1,253 | 1.79 per cent |
| Swindon | 294,800 | 5,227 | 1.77 per cent |
| Milton Keynes | 395,760 | 6,719 | 1.70 per cent |
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