Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many and what proportion of cars he estimates will be electric in the UK in 2020.

The Government wants almost every car and van in the UK to be a zero emission vehicle by 2050. This will mean that all new cars and vans should be zero emission by 2040.

In 2013 the Government’s strategy for ultra low emission vehicles set out an expectation that ULEVs could make up 3-7% of new car sales in 2020. Uptake in this new market is difficult to predict, and depends largely on the speed with which car manufacturers make new models available.

In the last quarter of 2015, ULEVs represented 1.3% of new car registrations in the UK. This is toward the upper end of the growth projections set out in 2013.