There’s an “interesting” subset of people who think electric vehicles can never work, offering a bunch of spurious arguments. 1.1 million delighted UK owners disagree.

In 5 years the ZEV mandate means manufacturers will no longer be allowed to sell new internal combustion engine cars in the UK. What will the current development pipeline will mean for EVs on sale then.

We bought our first EV 4 years ago, since when new EVs’ range on a single charge and build quality have improved, the choice of models leapt up and prices tumbled to near parity with legacy cars.

Expected EV improvements by 2030

The following is based on published research and forecasts:

• Longer range per charge: ~50% more (energy density >500Wh/kg)
• Battery cost halved: ~£60/kWh
• Even faster charging: 80% charge in 10 mins
• 2-3 times longer battery life (Source)

Longer battery life means EV life exceeds 500,000 miles, 5x a petrol engine. No need to change a car every couple of years, so less mined materials needed.
The reliability of EVs this will have impacts on the used car market, the car repair business & lease costs.

Resource use

EVs not only use less energy to drive, but logically use less raw materials to create them per driven mile. This is an analysis of the mined mineral needed to drive a million miles:

Petrol cars

Assuming 100,000 miles to replacement & ~1,400 kg of minerals per car.)
10 petrol cars are needed to cover 1 million miles.
Mined materials required: 10 x 1,400 kg = 14 tonnes

Electric vehicles

Assuming 250,000 miles until replacement & ~1,600 kg per EV).
4 EVs are needed to cover 1 million miles.
Total minerals for 4 EVs: 4 x 1,600 kg = 6.4 tonnes

By 2030 with and extended EV lifetime of just 400,000 miles:
2.5 EVs to cover 1 million miles.
Total minerals: 2.5 * 1,600 kg = 4 tonnes

That’s a 70% decrease in mined material.

For context, the UK Department for Transport advise UK drivers cover about 331 billion vehicle miles per year; cars are 250 billion of these (Source).

EV Charging

As an aside, the claims that there is nowhere to charge are somewhat wide of the mark.

The UK has well over 100,000 public charge points

According to Zapmap data (December 2024), the UK has 73,699 public EV charging devices across 37,011 locations. 1105 were added in December; it was a slow month, 8,803 were added in 2024.
Each device has 1.5 connectors on average,; the actual total number of charing conenctions was 108,410.

That’s about 1 connector for every 12 EVs.

In fact, there are over a million charge points in the UK if private chargers (work, home, etc) are taken into account.
The UK is on track to reach its target on numbers of chargers for 2030.

Run your home

Finally, increasing numbers of EVs are equipped with bidirectional charging and that’s likely to be the norm by 2030. That means you can run your home on the electricity stored in your car, as well as power your devices when you are away.