If you’ve ever wondered where in the UK electric cars are actually catching on — not just in the headlines but on the roads outside your local Tesco — a new study from Carwow has the answer. Using Department for Transport and DVLA data covering Q1 2025, the study ranks UK local authorities by EVs as a share of all licensed vehicles. The results are interesting, and the order might surprise you.
Here are the top 10 areas leading the way:
1. Windsor and Maidenhead — 80,563 EVs, making up 28.7% of all licensed vehicles. The biggest share in the country, driven by strong suburban adoption and easy access to home charging.
2. Stockport — 109,389 EVs, 25.2% of licensed vehicles. A clear sign that commuter towns feeding into Greater Manchester are going electric in big numbers.
3. Peterborough — 49,872 EVs, 19.9% of licensed vehicles. Strong growth among residential drivers and commuters.
4. Milton Keynes — 65,841 EVs, 16.4% of licensed vehicles. A town with a long-standing reputation for early EV infrastructure investment.
5. Swindon — 53,634 EVs, 16.2% of licensed vehicles. Its location between London and Bristol has helped commuter adoption.
6. Slough — 34,711 EVs, 16.8% of licensed vehicles. Heavy fleet and commuter use along the M4 corridor.
7. South Gloucestershire — 42,610 EVs, 12.8% of licensed vehicles. Suburban housing and driveway access have helped uptake here.
8. Leeds — 51,392 EVs, 9.8% of licensed vehicles. A big jump from just 0.7% five years earlier.
9. Manchester — 17,383 EVs, 8.1% of licensed vehicles. Strong progress driven by commuters and business fleets.
10. Portsmouth — 11,794 EVs, 7.9% of licensed vehicles. A respectable showing alongside expanding charger coverage.
What’s interesting about this list is how mixed it is. You’ve got commuter belt towns, full cities, and slightly more affluent suburban areas all sitting alongside each other. What ties them together is access — to home charging, to public chargers, and to the kind of driving patterns that make an EV genuinely practical.
For drivers in the private hire and taxi trade, the data also hints at where the work might be going. Areas with high EV ownership tend to push faster on Clean Air Zones, low-emission requirements and licensing rules favouring zero-emission vehicles. Whether you operate in Stockport, Manchester or Leeds, the direction of travel is clear.
It’s worth noting that lower adoption in other parts of the country doesn’t always mean a lack of interest. Carwow’s data shows places like Blaenau Gwent and Powys still sitting at 1% or below, partly because rural driving patterns and longer trips make the EV switch harder. Birmingham, despite being a major city, sits at just 1.8% — a reminder that big urban populations don’t automatically mean big EV uptake.
Across the whole of the UK, electric cars made up 23.4% of new car registrations in 2025, according to Carwow’s reporting of SMMT and Department for Transport figures. The shift is happening, but as the top 10 shows, it’s happening fastest in very specific places.
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