Almost one in five drivers say their next car will be electric

A survey published today puts a number on how many drivers actually intend to buy electric. Eighteen per cent of drivers say their next car will be a fully electric vehicle, against 7% who say their current car is one, according to Kwik Fit's annual buying-intentions research, carried out by Opinium among 2,000 UK adults between 25 and 29 September.

Those are stated intentions from a sample of 2,000 people, not registrations, and the distinction runs through everything below. A survey records what people tell a researcher they plan to do. Registration data records what they did. The two have never matched exactly, and the gap between them is where most arguments about the electric transition happen.

The direction of travel in the answers

Petrol remains the most common answer for what people own. Fifty-nine per cent of drivers say their current car runs on petrol, and 30% say their next one will. Diesel falls harder, from 17% owning one to 6% planning to buy one.

Low-emission intentions, which the survey defines as electric, hybrid or plug-in hybrid, sit at 44%. That is the highest figure in the six years Kwik Fit has asked the question, against 33% in the 2020 edition. Eleven points across six years is a real shift in what drivers say they want.

Timing matters as much as the share. Two thirds of drivers, 67%, say they plan to change their car, and they expect to do so in 22 months on average. Nearly a third, 31%, plan a change within 12 months, which Kwik Fit translates into 8.9 million drivers. Among that group the intentions are stronger still: 54% say they will choose a low-emission car and 27% say they will go fully electric.

Why 18% is not a forecast

An 18% intention across all drivers does not mean an 18% market share next year, and the survey's own timings explain why. Most drivers are not shopping this month. They are answering a question about a purchase that sits an average of 22 months away, and the cars they choose will land in the market across several years rather than in one quarter.

There is a second reason to hold the number lightly. Intentions surveys catch people at the point where they are interested but not committed, before a test drive, a finance quote and a conversation about charging at home have happened. The answers describe a direction. They do not describe a volume.

The policy is making some buyers hesitate

The survey's most awkward finding for ministers concerns the rule the policy is built on. The government is consulting on the phasing of the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate until 23 October, having opened the review on 14 August. The rule under review requires 80% of new car sales to be zero-emission by 2030 and 100% of new cars and vans by 2035.

That consultation appears to be feeding hesitation. Thirty per cent of drivers who plan to buy an EV next say the decision to consult on relaxing the mandate has made them less likely to choose one. Among people who already own an EV, 25% say the consultation has made it less likely that their next car will be electric.

What drivers say about keeping the rule

On the principle, the country is split. Thirty-six per cent agree the government should stick to the current mandate and 29% disagree. Current electric car owners are not split at all: 56% say the schedule should be kept and 15% disagree.

That gap is the interesting part. A policy question that looks balanced across the whole population looks very different among the people who have already made the switch and know what the daily reality involves. It also means the people with the most direct experience of the mandate's effect are the most reluctant to see it weakened, which is not the result a deregulatory argument would predict.

The barrier that moved

Range anxiety is still the most cited reason for not considering an electric car, at 35%, but it has fallen from 41% in 2023. The second most cited reason is now the inability to charge at home, also at 35%, up from sixth place a year earlier.

That is a change in the shape of the objection. A driver worried about range is worried about the car. A driver worried about charging at home is worried about their house, and extra public chargers do not answer it. That is also why the change to permitted development rights for households without a driveway mattered when it was confirmed last month.

The AA's quarterly readiness work tells a similar story from the infrastructure side. Its Q3 index scored the country at 60 out of 100, and named the price of a new electric car and the cost of charging without a home charger as the two barriers that have barely moved.

What it means at the forecourt

For a buyer, the useful reading is about resale rather than politics. A market where 6% of buyers plan a diesel next, against 17% who own one, describes a shrinking pool of people who want a used diesel. That is a demand problem for anyone selling one in three years, and it is the direction the used market has already been moving, with diesel demand down 19.2% in September.

The low-emission number also needs splitting. Among drivers planning to change within 12 months, 54% want a low-emission car and 27% want a fully electric one, which leaves roughly 27 percentage points for hybrids and plug-in hybrids. Those cars are doing a lot of the work in the 44% headline, and they are the ones a buyer is most likely to end up in if the charging question is unresolved.

Kwik Fit's operations director Dan Joyce framed the company's reading of it around balance, saying the mandate's phasing has to tread "the right balance between encouraging the transition to low emissions and the practicalities vehicle manufacturers face", and noting that any potential changes carry "a clear risk of creating uncertainty among drivers".

The read

The tension in this survey is the story. Intentions have moved well ahead of ownership, with 18% saying they will buy electric against 7% who own one, and that is a real signal about where demand sits. At the same time, the group most likely to switch is being pushed towards hesitation by uncertainty over the rule that requires the switch.

That is not an argument for or against the mandate. It is evidence that the phasing decision has a cost whichever way it goes, and that buyers are watching the argument closely enough to change their answers when it moves. For anyone selling cars, the practical message is that the electric buyer exists in larger numbers than the parc suggests, and the hybrid buyer exists in larger numbers than the electric headline suggests.