Demand for electric cars in Doncaster rockets

Demand for electric cars in Doncaster – the home of Energise Energy – is soaring with ownership increasing by a staggering 489 per cent from 2018 to 2019.

New data puts the town just behind Birmingham in a league table of the locations where ownership of plug-in cars is on the rise.

Last year, registrations for pure electric models rose by 144 per cent in Britain, as a total of 37,850 new battery-only vehicles entered the roads.

Government data for This is Money, analysed by car selling website Motorway, shows that there were 2,192 new electric cars registered in Birmingham from January 2019 up to the end of September the same year, compared to 340 in the corresponding period in 2018 – an increase of 527 per cent, the DVLA data shows.

Only Doncaster has seen growth in electric car ownership anywhere near the levels recorded in Birmingham.

The UK average is just 118 per cent – putting Doncaster way out in front.

The market share of battery electric vehicles is now 1.6 per cent, up from 0.7 per cent a year earlier.

Alex Buttle, director of Motorway, said: “The Government is under huge pressure to encourage switching to electric cars and these figures do suggest that car buying habits are changing, although not equally across the UK.

“Many car owners have expressed a reluctance to switch to electric until they are confident that there is a charging infrastructure in place that will be able to cope with demand.

“Although the green argument is a powerful one, and many of us would happily drive less polluting cars, too many people who rely on their vehicles every day are concerned about the number of available public and private electric charging points.”