The town of Poole, on the Dorset coast, has been named as Britain’s most electric car friendly by new research.
The study, which was conducted by car buying comparison website Motorway.co.uk, analysed the property market in towns and cities across the UK to find the areas best suited to electric vehicle (EV) ownership.
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Areas with the greatest proportion of houses with private, off-street parking were deemed best, as the homeowners would be able to install a charging point and top up their vehicles.
While Poole’s EV-friendliness may be something of a shock result, but an impressive 91.9 percent of properties in the seaside town offered off-street parking.
Other success stories included Solihull, in the West Midlands, and Chelmsford, in Essex, which both saw more than 90 percent of their properties provide private, off-street parking.
At the other end of the scale, the scene was perhaps less surprising, with London being named the least EV-friendly city in the country. Less than half (48.6 percent) of properties for sale in the capital had the parking spaces for easy EV charging.
Every other town or city studied provided off-street parking at more than half of its properties, although Dundee only just scraped over the 50 percent mark.
Alex Buttle, director of car buying comparison website Motorway.co.uk, said the problem of home charging could derail government plans to stop sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles in 2040.
“The physical shape of Britain’s housing stock could put a spanner in the works of the government’s electric switch over plans,” he said. “Although many car owners can expect to have access to on-street charging stations, there’s no guarantee there will be enough to go around.
“Most people will want the convenience of charging their car at home rather than having to walk to a main road to pick up their vehicle. Home charging is usually fine if you have a detached or semi-detached house with a driveway, but what about the millions of people who live in flats and terraced houses with no private, off-street parking?
“As the country moves closer to the 2040 government deadline proposed for a UK-wide diesel and petrol vehicle ban, the need for an electric car charging infrastructure becomes ever-more critical. We are talking about more than 30 million new power-hungry electric cars on the road by then if the switch over happens as expected.
“And if the UK needs more on-street charging stations, that is a cost that cash-strapped councils will need to meet. Will there really be enough funds available to power a shared charging network for 30 million cars by 2040?”