Annual Electric Vehicle (EV) sales have surged tenfold in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, new research has revealed.
The data from Volkswagen Financial Services UK (VWFS) shows that annual finance cases for electric vehicles increased 1,062% from July 2019 to July 2022.
The percentage of electric vehicles financed by the car finance company as a proportion of all vehicles in its fleet has increased from 1% in 2019 to 7% this year.
Quentin Wilson, former Top Gear presenter and founder of the FairCharge campaign, which advocates for the switch to accessible and affordable EVs, said the UK had seen “an explosion in EVs in the last two years” and electric cars should become “the preferred choice for many” in the next few years if energy prices remained “affordable”.
“There are many EVs that now do 200 to 280 miles on a single charge and batteries in some of the earliest EVs are outlasting the chassis of the car. Just look at our roads and you’ll see that hundreds of thousands of EV drivers have folded electric cars into their lives and successfully use them without anxieties,” he said.
The data further illustrates that while driver habits have changed in the last two years, four in 10 haven’t driven for work at all since January 2021 and 87% are driving fewer than 10,000 miles annually for leisure.
Research also shows that three in 10 Britons (or 31%) say their dream car has now changed from a petrol or diesel car to an electric car since the pandemic.
Moreover, people are now more likely to buy an EV (26%) than use public transport (24%) or buy a petrol or diesel car (19%) compared to pre-pandemic statistics. For example, an average contract term in 2019 was 41 months and this has risen slightly to 43 months in 2022. Similarly, consumers are still financing vehicles based on an average mileage of 11,000 miles per year.
Volkswagen Financial Services UK has also crowned Newcastle-upon-Tyne as the nation’s top EV hotspot, with more electric cars financed in the North East city in 2022 than anywhere else in the UK.
But while he described the “rapid acceleration of demand for electromobility” as very “exciting”, Darren Braybrook, Commercial Development Manager at Volkswagen Financial Services UK, said the country had not attained a “critical mass of BEV adoption” yet, which would see a decline in the acquisition cost of electric vehicles.
“Affordability is a key issue that the wider industry is working hard to improve as we know that cost is the primary barrier to EV adoption. That in itself is a positive challenge as it means that customers are already convinced of the benefits of going green. We just need to help customers have better access to these vehicles,” he added.