Which cities are best for EV drivers?

According to the latest statistics from ZapMap, the end of July 2024 marked 66,779 electric vehicle (EV) charge point installations across the UK, covering 34,570 locations.

Year-on-year, the number of public charging devices have increase 46 per cent. The majority of these charge points (39,434) are less than 8kW, followed by 14,251 in the range of 8 to 49 kW, 7,373 at 50 to 149 kW, and 5,721 exceeding 150 kW.

The geographical breakdown of charging distribution gives some guidance as to where EV drivers are most likely to find charging success. Range anxiety is one of the principal barriers preventing the uptake of EVs, so understanding where the charge points are is key to addressing this barrier.

Unsurprisingly, Greater London has the greatest concentration of chargepoints, boasting 21,065 across the city accounting for 31.54 per cent of total installations across the UK. In total, Greater London has more than double the number of installations than the UK’s next best region for EV infrastructure, which is the South East with 8,185 devices.

Scotland sits at third with5,810 installed chargepoints, followed by the West Midlands with 5,789, East of England with 4,776, and the South West with 4,736. Towards the bottom end of the table is Northern Ireland with just 622 installations, the North East with 1,848, and Wales with 2,860.

Saga Insurance conducted research to determine which UK cities were considered the most EV friendly. They found that, once again, London is the most EV-friendly city in the UK, followed by Newcastle, Glasgow, Coventry, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Portsmouth and Leeds.

Saga also analysed each city and ranked their performance on a scale of 0.00 to 10.00 in terms of how prepared the were for an EV transition. London received a score of 10.00 for off-street parking, while Coventry received a 10.00 for charging points, and Portsmouth hit a 10.00 for number of ultra low emission vehicles (ULEVs). Despite its present lack of charging infrastructure, Belfast ranked best in terms of the cost of charging an EV, making it a cost-effective location for ULEV owners.

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