100% of UK car buyers are ready to go electric for the right price: According to recent research conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), all of the country’s new car customers are willing to switch to electric vehicles if the cost is reasonable.
Large portions of the population used to have a lot of reservations about turning electric for their next vehicle; people who were reluctant about going electric cited things like range, charging, long-term battery capacity, and several other considerations as reasons for their reluctance to go electric.
An annual report titled “Driving Away From Fossil Fuels” conducts a survey of car buyers in the United Kingdom. In 2011, the report found that less than one percent of respondents said they would consider purchasing an electric vehicle even if it were priced similarly to fossil fuel-powered vehicles. In 2015, the percentage rose by only 2% from the previous year.
Now in the year 2022, the number unexpectedly reached one hundred percent (when includes plug-in hybrids):
100 percent of the 2,000 new car buyers in the UK that were surveyed for the Driving Away From Fossil Fuels report indicated that they would choose to purchase a battery-electric vehicle (BEV) or plug-in hybrid as long as the price of these alternative fuel vehicles was comparable to that of conventionally powered vehicles of the same type.
It’s interesting to note that this is the case despite the fact that 81 percent of the new car owners polled relied on on-street parking, which makes charging at home overnight more challenging.
Importantly, the findings of the poll indicate that faster deployment of public charging infrastructure will not greatly affect the desire that consumers have for electric vehicles. This is due to the fact that a poll found that 81 percent of people who purchase new cars have access to some kind of off-street parking.
The discovery that the availability of public charging stations will not influence the demand for new electric vehicles is a blow to the assertions made by some automakers, who argue that certain policies, such as the prohibition on the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles after the year 2030, ought to be reversed because there is insufficient public charging infrastructure.
Electric vehicle (EV) supporters in the UK are aiming to use the report to prove that the switch to EVs is going to happen sooner than most people realize and that markets like the UK need to get ready for it.
I’m delighted to have worked with the FairCharge campaign in publishing this report today – the findings are striking and indicate that we are at risk of missing a golden opportunity to go greener, faster – and realize in full the benefits of the electrification of road transport. Stephen Metcalfe, a Conservative MP for South Basildon, who writes a foreword to the report, made the following comment: “I’m delighted to have worked with the FairCharge campaign in publishing this report today.”
Today, we will be bringing these findings to my colleagues in Parliament, and it is my hope that they will join me and the 80,000 other supporters of the FairCharge campaign in putting pressure on the Government to make sure that we make the most of this opportunity.
More specifically, the group is advocating for the government to “abolish the VAT differential between public EV charging (at a rate of 20 percent) and home charging (at a rate of 5 percent) to ensure that those without access to off-street charging aren’t left behind. Additionally, the group is advocating for the government to ensure that local authorities are better resourced to implement plans to improve charging infrastructure.