Petrol pump chaos sparks demand for electric cars

Desperate motorists spent hours queuing outside petrol forecourts and motorway service stations this weekend, trying to fill up their tanks amid a nationwide supply panic. Others stayed at home, searching online for electric cars.

According to Auto Trader, views of new electric cars on its website rose 28pc compared with the prior weekend, and views of used ones climbed by 61pc.

While about one in seven adverts viewed on the site are for battery-powered cars, over the weekend it was one in four. Somebody contacted a retailer about an electric car every 1.8 minutes. Over weekends in August, this figure was one enquiry every 3.4 minutes.

Offline dealers noticed the same thing. “A number of franchised vehicle dealers have reported a spike in telephone enquiries and showroom visits, from both sales and aftersales customers, with a proportion of these referring to EVs,” says Sue Robinson of the National Franchised Dealers Association.

Ian Plummer, Auto Trader’s commercial director, adds: “We expect retailers with electric stock to do particularly well this week. [These figures] suggest that people aren’t simply flirting with the idea of electric but have been encouraged to actively pursue a purchase.”

The big electric switchover

The rise of electric vehicles at the expense of the internal combustion engine was a phenomenon that had been expected to occur slowly and steadily, until the petrol pump forecourts became practically empty.

The stealthy decline in lithium-ion battery prices and the gradual invasion of charging points would slowly flip the economic calculus over the course of a decade or more. But what if, instead, it is moments like this? Could images of lanes of Saturday traffic crawling towards supplies, or worse, empty stations, turbocharge the electric switchover?

“One thing I’m hoping will come of this is that people start to realise the only reason we fuel cars like this is that you have to,” says Joel Teague, the chief executive of Co Charger, an app that lets homeowners with charging points rent them to other electric car owners.

“There is no way you would want to build 15 minutes into your journey to stop and stand there in all weathers squirting flammable toxic stuff into the side of your car, and pay 80 quid for the privilege, unless you had to. The one thing that an EV [electric vehicle] driver will tell you they never ever want to do again is go to a petrol station.”

Electric vehicles were not the only beneficiaries of the petrol supply chaos, which is expected to go on for days, has hit 90pc of pumps in some areas, and which has led to calls for the Army to be drafted in. Halfords reported that e-bike sales had more than doubled, while those of jerry cans exploded 17-fold.

But a lengthy outage could start to move the needle on electric cars, says Prof David Bailey of Birmingham Business School. “We have been expecting to see a real tipping point in the middle of this decade, between 2023 and 2025,” he says, of the point where an electric car starts to become more viable than a petrol one. “If the supply chain disruption continues for some time it could accelerate things. If it’s sorted out quickly, it won’t have such a long term impact.”

The lure of a battery-powered lifestyle

Sales of electric vehicles have been steadily increasing in the UK already. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders says that registrations of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids have risen by 106.7pc and 143.6pc this year respectively, to account for 15pc of sales.

In 2020, there were 39 fully-electric car models on sale, compared to 27 the year before and 15 in 2016.

One of those launched last year was the Polestar 2. On Monday, Polestar, a Volvo electric car spin-off owned by China’s Geely, announced plans for a US listing that valued the company at $20bn (£14.6bn) – or $2m for each of the 10,000 cars it sold last year.

The valuation is designed to reflect the company’s potential: by 2025, it expects to sell around 290,000 cars a year.

Such optimistic sales projections are par for the course for the recent crop of newly-public electric car companies, many of which have run into trouble before a single vehicle rolls off the production line.

Plummer, of Auto Trader, says that right now, electric vehicles remain out of reach compared to their petrol-powered counterparts. “Electric cars are prohibitively expensive for the majority of people, and despite the significant increase in range performance among new models, capable of reaching around 250 miles on a single charge, concerns of an inadequate charging infrastructure remain.”

Teague, of Co Charger, disagrees. “I can buy and run my EV for less than I used to spend on petrol and tax. Most people spend over £300 a month on their car, they just don’t know it.”

Cost aside, however, many of the people stuck in service station queues this weekend may simply find themselves tempted by the battery-powered lifestyle, the idea that electric vehicle ownership means starting every day with a “full tank” that has been charged overnight.

“They’re like mobile phones with wheels, and there’s a reason why there are not mobile phone charging stations on the M6: we don't need them because we left home with a full phone,” says Teague, brushing off concerns about the state of the UK’s roadside charger network. “[With an electric vehicle], 90pc of charging roughly happens at home or at work.”

But habits are not easily broken. Despite this week’s forecourt chaos, there was no noticeable decline in miles driven in the UK, according to data collected from Apple’s Maps app.

Many motorists are likely to brush off the recent disruption as an inconvenient one off. What is likely to matter now is whether the tanker driver shortage that has caused it becomes a repeat occurrence. At that point, being able to fill up at home might start to look tempting.