8 ms·

The road to electric in charts and data

62 points by zeristor 7mo ago

hdgvhicv 7mo ago
I found https://www.racfoundation.org/research/mobility/still-standing-still https://www.racfoundation.org/research/mobility/still-standi... a fascinating report, especially how nearly half of London has off-road parking.
- mytailorisrich 7mo ago
  "London" covers a quite large area and outside of central London houses are the most common type of housing.
- zeristor 7mo ago
  Thanks, this link therein looks very impressive, about the usage of space for parking, and the roads needed to connect them too: https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/spaced_out-bates_leibling-jul12.pdf https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/spa...
- politelemon 7mo ago
  The "or with the potential to have" is hiding away a lot, to the point of being misleading. Most homes, especially in flats and terraced housing, which are the majority, won't have the infrastructure support for charging point conversion.
  - edent 7mo ago
    I don't think that's quite accurate. Flats and terraced homes aren't the majority - about 55% of people live in detached or semi-detached houses. See the ONS Census data at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/housingenglandandwales/census2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/... My terraced house has off-street parking, as do most of them in my area. Houses with separate garages are also fairly easy to upgrade - we had an armoured cable buried in a new trench to connect our old property. Similarly, most flats with car-parks are especially easy to add chargers to. They can either be 7kW points or just regular plugs. We had slow chargers installed in our old flat. Yes, there are many properties with no easy way to add charging. But none of those places have a petrol pump attached either.
- grey-area 7mo ago
  Most of inner London doesn't need a car at all.
- ageitgey 7mo ago
  In my (generally affluent) zone 4 neighborhood in London, the number of green plate EVs had multiplied like rabbits over the past few years, but few houses have off-street parking. A huge percentage of the cars parked on street are EVs. But since you can plug in to charge at many street lamp posts and since most people don't drive their cars much on a day to day basis, it all works fine even without off-street parking. There are also several reserved medium-speed charging spots around the neighborhood and lots of fast chargers at the local large grocery store.
  - quickthrowman 7mo ago
    > But since you can plug in to charge at many street lamp posts Are these the standard UK 230V 13A fused single-phase receptacles? Those put out about twice as much power as a 120V 15A circuit protected by a breaker, 3kW vs 1.5kW 230 * 13 = 2990W 120 * 15 = 1800 * .8 = 1440W Using those for L1 charging would be a lot better than US L1 charging.
    - ageitgey 7mo ago
      No, they are 3.5kW - 5kW standard EV chargers. But it's probably easy to install them using the existing power run. But you are right that standard wall charging is much more viable in a 230V system here than in the US. Some people just run a cable from inside to their car if they don't have a 'real' charger yet.
rwmj 7mo ago
This seems to lack 2025 data, unless BEVs have suddenly disappeared! (Which they haven't, everyone around here in stockbrokerland seems to have one.)
- ThoAppelsin 7mo ago
  The data point for BEVs in 2025 is off by a factor of 1000. It reads 1,747.961; the decimal point instead of thousands separator is surely an error.
  - hermitcrab 7mo ago
    I am embarrassed for the RAC that they put out a graph with such a blindly obvious error. I spotted it within 10 seconds. Did they not read their own report?
    - hermitcrab 7mo ago
      I included this as an example of garbage data: https://successfulsoftware.net/2026/03/29/stop-publishing-garbage-data-its-embarrassing/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2026/03/29/stop-publishing-ga...
- hdgvhicv 7mo ago
  Petrol is just too cheap to justify the cost unless you drive massive amounts. I do 3,000 miles a year, that costs £400 a year The cheapest electric car I can see is £2500. It would take me 6 years to get the money back even if the electric was free Average car does twice that mileage but that’s still a small part of the total cost of ownership. I got petrol Friday for £1.45 a litre. In July 2022 it was £1.90 a litre, or £2.20 inflation adjusted. In 2012 it was £1.40 or £2.05 a litre inflation adjusted. Maybe if petrol was in the £2-2.50 a litre it would make sense
  - youngtaff 7mo ago
    Petrol has never been £1.90 a litre for any length of time https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time
silvestrov 7mo ago
From html <head> "datePublished": "2024-09-26T13:11:00.000Z", The content is just very old. This article is from Feb 2026: https://www.zapmap.com/ev-stats/ev-market https://www.zapmap.com/ev-stats/ev-market
- youngtaff 7mo ago
  Here’s the RAC’s data from 2025 https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/electric-car-statistics-and-data/ https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/electric-... SMMT publish monthly data too And which ever way we look at it electric cars are becoming more popular
  - ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
    Collated sales data for many countries: https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/
atombender 7mo ago
(2024)
bluescrn 7mo ago
EVs are great if you're wealthy and have the prerequisite 'EV-compatible home' (with garage/driveway for charging) But a lot of UK housing relies on on-street parking, and there's flats with car parks where charging isn't currently practical. So far there's very little attempt to solve this, leaving green tech mostly as 'expensive toys for the rich'. Roll-out of public chargers is slow, and they're always going to be vastly more expensive to use compared to home charging. Similarly, many people are locked out of heat pumps and home solar due to 'incompatible homes'. Most problems the UK faces come down to the excessive cost of housing. (And meanwhile, the government are quite determined to keep the majority of PLEVs - e-scooters and >250W ebikes, entirely illegal, while illegal use grows rapidly and is policed very inconsistently)
- fzeindl 7mo ago
  > But a lot of UK housing relies on on-street parking, and there's flats with car parks where charging isn't currently practical. You forget the larger problem less wealthy individuals face: They typically already own a ICE-car and can‘t afford to purchase a new car multiple times in their lives.
  - bluescrn 7mo ago
    The used car market should solve that eventually - so long as battery longevity is there. A reasonably maintained ICE car can last 20+ years of low mileage use. We need battery packs that last that long, or that are modular and replaceable for a reasonable price.
- te_chris 7mo ago
  Bollocks. We live in a flat in London, we have an EV. Charging isn’t cheap like if I was charging on my home tariff, but still cheaper than gas and there’s lots of options around me. I get a discount as a local resident too. Your points on home solar and heat pumps are accurate, but people are working on splitting solar and battery across flats, e.g. Negativity isn’t the answer; especially not when there are actual solutions available.
  - 7mo ago
iamflimflam1 7mo ago
Moving to electric is not some optional thing that you can choose not to do. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. They will run out at some point. We can either make the shift now or we'll have to do it later. Much better to do change early and invest in it early.
- jorisboris 7mo ago
  When I was 12 my school books said we would run out of oil in 20 years I’m older than 32 now
  - iamflimflam1 7mo ago
    Do you believe there is an unlimited amount of oil in the world?
    - jorisboris 7mo ago
      At least until the end of our respective lifetimes
  - benj111 7mo ago
    When you were 12 it probably said the life expectancy was X years. If you reached X+1 years would you conclude that you would live forever?
- perilunar 7mo ago
  Strictly speaking fossil fuels being finite does not mean we have to move to electric vehicles. We could switch to 'green' hydrogen, biofuels, or synthetic fuels. We'd still switch to renewables (or maybe nuclear), just not necessarily to electric.
leonidasrup 7mo ago
In general, is it more efficient for society to invest in electric cars, or in electric trains? French TGV trains have been planed as turbotrain powered by gas turbines, but after 1973 oil crisis evolved into electric trains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV
- crote 7mo ago
  Considering the article is talking about the UK, which recently axed a significant portion of its new high-speed railway corridor: don't count on it. Even worse: railway electrification is not at all a given in the UK. A big downside of being the first country to roll out railways is that a huge number of railway lines (crucially, including tunnels and overpasses) were built to the dimensions of early trains. In practice this means that electrification isn't just adding some wires, it means having to re-dig all of the tunnels and having to raise all of the overpasses. To illustrate, the UKs universal loading gauge is small enough that you can't even fit regular intermodal container trains into it - and that's without overhead wiring!
  - iamflimflam1 7mo ago
    A lot of the railway network uses a “third rail” to carry power. You don’t necessarily need overhead lines. https://www.networkrail.co.uk/our-work/looking-after-the-railway/track/third-rail/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/our-work/looking-after-the-rai...
    - roryirvine 7mo ago
      There'll be no new third rail electrification, though (apart from some minor infill, or reorganisation around depots). The conversion of remaining mainlines to 25 kV overhead AC is going slower than anyone wants, but already over 70% of passenger rail journeys use electric traction (and actually more like 80% by passenger kilometers). There are an awful lot of low-traffic rural lines that it won't be economic to electrify using current technology, so we'll need to rely on battery electric for those. Either way, it's largely orthogonal to the problem of electrifying road transport.
MomsAVoxell 7mo ago
I live in a city which is far better navigated by foot or by bicycle than by car - it was, after all, designed for the horses ass. So I converted to electric - at first, electric moped, but now I ride a more powerful electric motorbike. It is simply a pleasure to get on and ride every day, smooth, quiet, efficient - and because I’m not car-sized, extremely fun to get around. I encourage everyone to not just get off the petroleum treadmill, but to also try to live closer to the things that are important. I know a vast swath of humanity has to navigate the plains every day just for survival - but getting a closer, more local outlook on life can be rewarding too, and converting to electric has certainly provided that for me personally.

62 points by zeristor 7mo ago

I found https://www.racfoundation.org/research/mobility/still-standing-still https://www.racfoundation.org/research/mobility/still-standi... a fascinating report, especially how nearly half of London has off-road parking.

mytailorisrich 7mo ago
"London" covers a quite large area and outside of central London houses are the most common type of housing.
zeristor 7mo ago
Thanks, this link therein looks very impressive, about the usage of space for parking, and the roads needed to connect them too: https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/spaced_out-bates_leibling-jul12.pdf https://www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/spa...
politelemon 7mo ago
The "or with the potential to have" is hiding away a lot, to the point of being misleading. Most homes, especially in flats and terraced housing, which are the majority, won't have the infrastructure support for charging point conversion.
- edent 7mo ago
  I don't think that's quite accurate. Flats and terraced homes aren't the majority - about 55% of people live in detached or semi-detached houses. See the ONS Census data at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/housingenglandandwales/census2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/... My terraced house has off-street parking, as do most of them in my area. Houses with separate garages are also fairly easy to upgrade - we had an armoured cable buried in a new trench to connect our old property. Similarly, most flats with car-parks are especially easy to add chargers to. They can either be 7kW points or just regular plugs. We had slow chargers installed in our old flat. Yes, there are many properties with no easy way to add charging. But none of those places have a petrol pump attached either.
grey-area 7mo ago
Most of inner London doesn't need a car at all.
ageitgey 7mo ago
In my (generally affluent) zone 4 neighborhood in London, the number of green plate EVs had multiplied like rabbits over the past few years, but few houses have off-street parking. A huge percentage of the cars parked on street are EVs. But since you can plug in to charge at many street lamp posts and since most people don't drive their cars much on a day to day basis, it all works fine even without off-street parking. There are also several reserved medium-speed charging spots around the neighborhood and lots of fast chargers at the local large grocery store.
- quickthrowman 7mo ago
  > But since you can plug in to charge at many street lamp posts Are these the standard UK 230V 13A fused single-phase receptacles? Those put out about twice as much power as a 120V 15A circuit protected by a breaker, 3kW vs 1.5kW 230 * 13 = 2990W 120 * 15 = 1800 * .8 = 1440W Using those for L1 charging would be a lot better than US L1 charging.
  - ageitgey 7mo ago
    No, they are 3.5kW - 5kW standard EV chargers. But it's probably easy to install them using the existing power run. But you are right that standard wall charging is much more viable in a 230V system here than in the US. Some people just run a cable from inside to their car if they don't have a 'real' charger yet.

rwmj 7mo ago

This seems to lack 2025 data, unless BEVs have suddenly disappeared! (Which they haven't, everyone around here in stockbrokerland seems to have one.)

ThoAppelsin 7mo ago
The data point for BEVs in 2025 is off by a factor of 1000. It reads 1,747.961; the decimal point instead of thousands separator is surely an error.
- hermitcrab 7mo ago
  I am embarrassed for the RAC that they put out a graph with such a blindly obvious error. I spotted it within 10 seconds. Did they not read their own report?
  - hermitcrab 7mo ago
    I included this as an example of garbage data: https://successfulsoftware.net/2026/03/29/stop-publishing-garbage-data-its-embarrassing/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2026/03/29/stop-publishing-ga...
hdgvhicv 7mo ago
Petrol is just too cheap to justify the cost unless you drive massive amounts. I do 3,000 miles a year, that costs £400 a year The cheapest electric car I can see is £2500. It would take me 6 years to get the money back even if the electric was free Average car does twice that mileage but that’s still a small part of the total cost of ownership. I got petrol Friday for £1.45 a litre. In July 2022 it was £1.90 a litre, or £2.20 inflation adjusted. In 2012 it was £1.40 or £2.05 a litre inflation adjusted. Maybe if petrol was in the £2-2.50 a litre it would make sense
- youngtaff 7mo ago
  Petrol has never been £1.90 a litre for any length of time https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time

silvestrov 7mo ago

From html <head> "datePublished": "2024-09-26T13:11:00.000Z", The content is just very old. This article is from Feb 2026: https://www.zapmap.com/ev-stats/ev-market https://www.zapmap.com/ev-stats/ev-market

youngtaff 7mo ago
Here’s the RAC’s data from 2025 https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/electric-car-statistics-and-data/ https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/electric-... SMMT publish monthly data too And which ever way we look at it electric cars are becoming more popular
- ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
  Collated sales data for many countries: https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/ https://robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/

atombender 7mo ago

(2024)

bluescrn 7mo ago

EVs are great if you're wealthy and have the prerequisite 'EV-compatible home' (with garage/driveway for charging) But a lot of UK housing relies on on-street parking, and there's flats with car parks where charging isn't currently practical. So far there's very little attempt to solve this, leaving green tech mostly as 'expensive toys for the rich'. Roll-out of public chargers is slow, and they're always going to be vastly more expensive to use compared to home charging. Similarly, many people are locked out of heat pumps and home solar due to 'incompatible homes'. Most problems the UK faces come down to the excessive cost of housing. (And meanwhile, the government are quite determined to keep the majority of PLEVs - e-scooters and >250W ebikes, entirely illegal, while illegal use grows rapidly and is policed very inconsistently)

fzeindl 7mo ago
> But a lot of UK housing relies on on-street parking, and there's flats with car parks where charging isn't currently practical. You forget the larger problem less wealthy individuals face: They typically already own a ICE-car and can‘t afford to purchase a new car multiple times in their lives.
- bluescrn 7mo ago
  The used car market should solve that eventually - so long as battery longevity is there. A reasonably maintained ICE car can last 20+ years of low mileage use. We need battery packs that last that long, or that are modular and replaceable for a reasonable price.
te_chris 7mo ago
Bollocks. We live in a flat in London, we have an EV. Charging isn’t cheap like if I was charging on my home tariff, but still cheaper than gas and there’s lots of options around me. I get a discount as a local resident too. Your points on home solar and heat pumps are accurate, but people are working on splitting solar and battery across flats, e.g. Negativity isn’t the answer; especially not when there are actual solutions available.
- 7mo ago

iamflimflam1 7mo ago

Moving to electric is not some optional thing that you can choose not to do. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. They will run out at some point. We can either make the shift now or we'll have to do it later. Much better to do change early and invest in it early.

jorisboris 7mo ago
When I was 12 my school books said we would run out of oil in 20 years I’m older than 32 now
- iamflimflam1 7mo ago
  Do you believe there is an unlimited amount of oil in the world?
  - jorisboris 7mo ago
    At least until the end of our respective lifetimes
- benj111 7mo ago
  When you were 12 it probably said the life expectancy was X years. If you reached X+1 years would you conclude that you would live forever?
perilunar 7mo ago
Strictly speaking fossil fuels being finite does not mean we have to move to electric vehicles. We could switch to 'green' hydrogen, biofuels, or synthetic fuels. We'd still switch to renewables (or maybe nuclear), just not necessarily to electric.

leonidasrup 7mo ago

In general, is it more efficient for society to invest in electric cars, or in electric trains? French TGV trains have been planed as turbotrain powered by gas turbines, but after 1973 oil crisis evolved into electric trains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV

crote 7mo ago
Considering the article is talking about the UK, which recently axed a significant portion of its new high-speed railway corridor: don't count on it. Even worse: railway electrification is not at all a given in the UK. A big downside of being the first country to roll out railways is that a huge number of railway lines (crucially, including tunnels and overpasses) were built to the dimensions of early trains. In practice this means that electrification isn't just adding some wires, it means having to re-dig all of the tunnels and having to raise all of the overpasses. To illustrate, the UKs universal loading gauge is small enough that you can't even fit regular intermodal container trains into it - and that's without overhead wiring!
- iamflimflam1 7mo ago
  A lot of the railway network uses a “third rail” to carry power. You don’t necessarily need overhead lines. https://www.networkrail.co.uk/our-work/looking-after-the-railway/track/third-rail/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/our-work/looking-after-the-rai...
  - roryirvine 7mo ago
    There'll be no new third rail electrification, though (apart from some minor infill, or reorganisation around depots). The conversion of remaining mainlines to 25 kV overhead AC is going slower than anyone wants, but already over 70% of passenger rail journeys use electric traction (and actually more like 80% by passenger kilometers). There are an awful lot of low-traffic rural lines that it won't be economic to electrify using current technology, so we'll need to rely on battery electric for those. Either way, it's largely orthogonal to the problem of electrifying road transport.

MomsAVoxell 7mo ago

I live in a city which is far better navigated by foot or by bicycle than by car - it was, after all, designed for the horses ass. So I converted to electric - at first, electric moped, but now I ride a more powerful electric motorbike. It is simply a pleasure to get on and ride every day, smooth, quiet, efficient - and because I’m not car-sized, extremely fun to get around. I encourage everyone to not just get off the petroleum treadmill, but to also try to live closer to the things that are important. I know a vast swath of humanity has to navigate the plains every day just for survival - but getting a closer, more local outlook on life can be rewarding too, and converting to electric has certainly provided that for me personally.