Electric vehicles

The UK achieved record-breaking battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales in 2024, with 381,970 new BEVs registered, marking a 21.4% increase from 2023. This accounted for 19.6% of all new car registrations in the country.  March 2025 saw 69,313 BEV registrations, a 42.3% increase year-on-year and a record for a single month’s registrations.

Epping Forest district still has the largest number of BEVs per head on the roads of all Essex districts. BEV plus London electric cabs owned locally exceeded 2,500 vehicles at Q2 2024, plus around 1,250 plug-in hybrids (PHEV).

EV charging

The public EV charging infrastructure locally continues to improve. The 14 ultra-rapid (120+ kW DC) chargers from Instavolt across 5 council-owned car parks in the district remain busy and with EFDC taking over the Epping Cottis Yard multi-storey car park from Qualis, we want to do more with the 17 ‘fast’ chargers there (7-22 kW), which are the cheapest in the district at 44p per kWh. Some vehicles can charge at full 22 kW (sometimes as an option at purchase) whilst others can get 11 kW – the Pod Point app identifies the 22 kW chargers.

Essex County Council (ECC) have announced the locations for 15 low cost on-street chargers in Loughton, Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell following their central government ORCS funding success in 2023. This is the largest deployment of any Essex district, in line with strong local EV adoption. These should mostly be going live in 2025.

ECC has also been successful in their bid to the much larger LEVI fund which promises to deliver hundreds of lower cost public chargers from 2026/27.

EFDC has installed a small number of EV chargers in some new build council housing developments (not open to the public at this stage). We are also updating our tenant guides and policies on installation and use of EV charging at council-owned properties. If you are a council tenant, you must speak to us before having a home charging point installed. Remember, trailing charging cables across pavements or grassed areas is not permitted and even if you have off street parking, we recommend an approved installation engineer visits your home before going ahead just in case there are other reasons a home charger is not possible.

Providing public EV charging supports our key policies of reducing road transport emissions, helping meet the Interim Air Pollution Mitigation Strategy for a minimum 10% conversion of petrol cars to Ultra Low Emission Vehicles by 2025, and working towards becoming a carbon-neutral district by 2030.

ECC has also been successful in their bid to the much larger LEVI fund being allocated £8.3m which promises to deliver hundreds of lower-cost public chargers on and off-street from 2026 to 2027. Within this activity, ECC may consider other solutions such as cross-pavement channelling for home charging where off-street parking is impossible, or selective use of lamp posts, but this is still under review.

Tell Essex County Council where you would like to see on-street EV chargers.

Latest EV news

Grants

Office of Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) grant schemes for the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure: guidance and application forms (for freeholders of flats and business premises).

Find a charge point

Epping – Cottis Yard car park

Loughton – Burton Road car park

Loughton – Oakwood Hill East car park

Loughton – Traps Hill car park

Ongar – Bansons Lane car park

Waltham Abbey – Cornmill car park

Find a charge point near you

On-street EV charging

This is the responsibility of Essex County Council. They are still finalising their strategy in this area but one thing unlikely in Essex is the use of street lights to supply overnight EV charging.

If you want to know more about on-street charging, visit the Essex County Council electric vehicles page where there is an enquiries email address.

Want to know more

If you want to know more about our EV activities, or to register interest in more off-street charging options near you:

More information