Observation: Not Many EVs in the UK?

Just spent a long weekend in the UK, and while I have not spent much time on the roads (I mainly traveled in trains to the events I was attending), I have done a couple of slow trips on the M25 and a few trips to & from train stations.

I was expecting to see a lot more EVs on the roads here given everything I’ve read, and watched, and yet they were few and far between. In all of the time on the M25 (several hours in total), I saw just one Tesla. No other EVs that I recognized. Off the motorways, I spotted just three: one Nissan Leaf, one VW Up and one BMW i3.

Charging Infrastructure

I did find Pod Point charging bays at South Croydon station (which is a very quiet station most of the time since few trains bother to stop there). The four parking spots serviced by them were not marked in any way as being reserved for charging (and there were no signs even identifying the spaces as being EV charging spots).

There were none at the Sainsbury’s I visited, and, while it was claimed there were some at East Grinstead railway station, I never saw there there (and there we comments in the Zap-Map entry for them implying that others have struggled to find them too).

Why?

Is this just an issue with the south east of England? Given all the premium vehicles I did see, I was surprised there were not more Teslas on the roads – certainly appears that people in this part of England have the means to afford them.

Maybe, when the likes of the Porsche Taycan, Jaguar I-Pace, Audi e-tron or the Mercedes EQ range, when they finally arrive in showrooms, will have more impact on this area. Are there other areas of the UK where EVs are more common?

It was very disappointing to see that in an area where people are buying new cars regularly, and clearly have the money to buy premium vehicles, that there were so few EVs on the roads. Sitting in the heavy traffic on the M25, surrounded by single occupancy vehicles all pumping fumes into the air was depressing.