150% increase in companies with EVs on fleet

There has been a one-and-a-half fold (150%) increase in electric vehicles on company fleets compared to a year earlier, RAC’s analysis of the latest official Government data shows.

The data also shows that the number of battery electric vehicles in private hands in the UK rose by nearly 30,000 in the 12 months to September 2020, an increase of 53% on the year before, with more than a third of these (36%) in London and the South East of England. 

The increases mean that almost exactly half of all BEVs in the UK – 86,130 vehicles – were licensed by private individuals as of the end of the third quarter of 2020, with the remainder of 86,387 vehicles licensed by companies. 

Four of the top 10 local authority areas with the greatest number of privately licensed BEVs are in London, with Barnet having the most (1,235 vehicles). Wiltshire has the second highest number (1,075 vehicles), followed by Westminster (919 vehicles), Cornwall (899 vehicles) and Camden (781 vehicles). Conversely, the smallest numbers of privately run BEVs, aside from those on some island communities and the square mile that is the City of London, are to be found in South Wales – in Merthyr Tydfil (21 vehicles) and Blaenau Gwent (27 vehicles).

When it comes to the areas seeing the fastest growth in privately registered battery electric vehicles, the top two authorities are in London – Barking and Dagenham, and Waltham Forest – both of which have seen numbers double in the space of 12 months (from 52 in 2019 to 112 in 2020, and 89 to 179 respectively). Growth outside the capital is spread widely, with parts of Derbyshire, Cumbria, south west Wales and Sussex all recording significant increases, albeit starting from small bases.

At the other end of the scale, growth of battery electric vehicles was slowest in parts of Northern Ireland including Armagh (up just eight vehicles, from 134 to 142), Gateshead and Sunderland in the north east of England and on the Orkney Islands. Only the Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall, recorded a drop in licensed BEVs between 2019 and 2020, down from 28 to 25.

Overall, 87.3% of all battery electric vehicles licensed by private individuals were in England as of September 2020, almost unchanged (up 0.3%) compared to a year earlier. Scotland has the next biggest proportion (8.2%, up from 8.1%) followed by Wales (3.0%, down from 3.1%) and Northern Ireland (1.4%, down from 1.8%).