For the first time ever, electric cars have outsold petrol cars in the UK, not just in a single record month, but over a full year. In the 12 months to May 2026, drivers bought 516,490 new battery electric vehicles, compared with 504,010 new petrol cars. In June, BEVs hit 30% of the market, up 38% year-on-year.
It's a genuine milestone. But if you're one of the millions of drivers who park on the street, it might not feel like your moment yet, and there's a good reason for that.
It's not an even playing field, yet
Here's the catch: roughly two in five UK motorists can't easily charge cheaply at home. This figure includes taxi drivers, fleet drivers and other PHV drivers, whose profits are being squeezed by not having access to affordable charging.
Home charging is typically five to ten times cheaper than public charging, partly because of a VAT quirk: electricity used at home is taxed at 5%, while public charging is taxed at the full 20%. If you can plug in on your own drive overnight, you're paying a fraction of what someone relying on public infrastructure pays for the same miles.
So the 516,490 figure is real, but it's disproportionately made up of people who already had the easiest route into EV ownership. The next wave of adoption depends on making charging just as easy, and just as cheap, for everyone else.
Where the growth is coming from
The other shift worth watching is who's actually buying these cars. Chinese brands, MG, Chery, BYD among them, now account for roughly one in seven new car sales in the UK, and they're doing it with genuinely affordable EVs.
That's significant because affordable cars tend to find buyers who are less likely to own a driveway in the first place. The very group driving the next leg of EV growth is the group the current charging landscape serves worst.
What this means for char.gy drivers
This is exactly the gap on-street charging exists to close. If you don't have a driveway, on-street charging isn't a backup option; it's your home charging. As affordable EVs bring in more drivers who park on the street, demand for reliable, fairly priced charge points close to home is only going to grow.
We're not waiting for the market to sort this out on its own. Every charge point we install is a small correction to a two-tier system that, left alone, would leave street parkers paying more for the same transition everyone else is being sold as inevitable.
Want a charge point on your street?
If you're one of the two in five without a driveway, you shouldn't have to pay the difference. Request a charge point near you and help us bring affordable, on-street charging to more streets across the UK.