Six out of ten British motorists say cost concerns are keeping them from switching to an electric vehicle. That number is moving in the wrong direction.
Data from Europcar Mobility Group’s quarterly EV Barometer shows perceived barriers to EV adoption climbed across the board in Q1 2026 compared to the previous quarter. Cost worries jumped from 54% to 60%. Charging infrastructure anxiety rose from 37% to nearly 43%.
Even vehicle choice — in a market flooded with new models from China and everywhere else — ticked upward as a concern, hovering around 14%. This is happening in a maturing market with more EVs on sale than ever, more public chargers being installed monthly, and an ongoing fuel crisis in Iran that should, on paper, be pushing consumers toward electrification faster.
Instead, confidence is going backward. And there’s a strong candidate for why.
The U.K. government’s proposal to introduce a pay-per-mile tax on electric vehicles, floated during the autumn budget last November, appears to have landed like a grenade in the middle of the transition. One of the core financial incentives for going electric — cheaper running costs versus petrol and diesel — suddenly looked less certain. Consumers who were on the fence got shoved back to the wrong side of it.
“Mixed messages from government, including the proposed pay-per-mile tax for EVs, could well be creating confusion,” said Tom Middleditch, Europcar’s sustainability spokesperson. That’s a diplomatic way of saying the government is undermining its own policy with one hand while enforcing it with the other.
The Europcar survey, conducted monthly among 500 motorists through the Vypr platform, asks the same questions consistently and tracks trends quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. It’s not a snapshot. It’s a trendline. And the trendline says the public mood on EVs is souring, not sweetening.
Charging infrastructure remains stubbornly stuck as a top-tier worry. The U.K. has made genuine progress installing public chargers, but progress and perception are two different animals. If a driver in rural Lancashire still can’t find a reliable fast charger within 15 minutes of home, national installation statistics are meaningless to them.
The cost picture is arguably worse. Purchase prices for EVs remain elevated compared to equivalent combustion models. Finance deals are tightening and insurance premiums for battery-electric cars have been a persistent sore point.
Now layer on the threat of per-mile taxation and the math that once made a compelling case for switching starts to look shaky to an average household. Vehicle availability barely moved as a barrier, which makes sense. The market is awash in new EV models from legacy automakers, Chinese newcomers, and everyone in between.
The problem was never selection. It was always money and infrastructure.
The U.K. still has a 2035 deadline for ending new petrol and diesel car sales. That target requires millions of private buyers to make a switch they are increasingly telling pollsters they’re not ready to make. Fleet and corporate buyers have been carrying the EV adoption numbers for years now, and private retail demand was supposed to be the next wave.
These numbers suggest that wave hasn’t arrived. It may be receding. Government policy that simultaneously mandates electric adoption and taxes it into doubt isn’t a transition strategy. It’s a contradiction. And British consumers can smell it.
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