Despite only accounting for 12% of cars and vans in Great Britain, vans may need 26% of the energy requirement by 2050.
In our comprehensive analysis of MOT mileage data, we’ve discovered that, if all vehicles went electric overnight, vans would need 18 TWh of electricity per year.
To understand how much energy vans and cars may need in the future, we’ve focused on vehicle type, mileage, and energy consumption.
Whether a vehicle is a van isn’t always clear. When referring to vans, we’re using the Department for Transport (DfT) Body Type classification ‘Light goods vehicles (LGVs)’, which include LGVs less than 3 tonnes and LGVs between 3 and 3.5 tonnes. When referring to cars, we’re referencing DfT Body Type classification ‘cars’, but remember, some cars can also double up as a van (if they have their rear windows blocked out). We worked hard to capture these differences.
We’re using vehicle licensing data to get a view of cars and vans legally allowed to be on the road in Great Britain. We then combined this with over 30 million class 4, class 5, and class 7 MOT tests from 2021 to get total vehicle mileage. We believe that total mileage may be higher as we’ve had to extrapolate mileage on newer vehicles because MOTs are usually for vehicles older than three years.
In 2021, 4.5 million vans drove 41 billion miles, the equivalent of driving to the moon and back over 86,000 times. In comparison, 32 million cars drove 183 billion miles, which is just 5,682 miles per vehicle – 45% less annually per car than vans.
| Number of vehicles in 2022 | Average mileage per vehicle in the category (miles per year) | Total mileage of all vehicles in category (miles per year) | |
| Cars | 32 million | 5,682 | 183 billion |
| Vans | 4.5 million | 9,167 | 41 billion |
Vans account for only 12% of all vehicles but do 18% of the total annual miles. Larger vans have 34% higher average miles per year compared with vans lighter than 3 tonnes.
What would happen if the whole fleet went electric? With the total number of miles driven, we can assign an average electric efficiency for each vehicle category to indicate how much energy the fleet would need. However, what’s the best way to work out the efficiency rating for each category? We grouped together vehicles using the New Car Assessment Programs’ (NCAP) vehicle classification to proportionately calculate average car and van efficiency.
We realise that different cars and vans will deliver different efficiencies depending on load and conditions. Also, that in the future these efficiencies will improve with technology. However, we used current data rather than attempting to forecast these improvements.
| Average miles/kWh
|
Average kWh used per vehicle per year (kWh) | Total GWh used by all vehicles per year (GWh) | |
| Cars | 3.5 | 1,617 | 51,980 |
| Vans less than 3 tonnes | 2.5 | 3,275 | 11,233 |
| Vans 3 to 3.5 tonnes | 2.0 | 6,176 | 6,583 |
A van less than 3 tonnes would use almost double the amount of energy a car would – a van over 3 tonnes would use almost 4x more. Looking at the whole fleet, if all vehicles were electric, cars would have required 52 TWh of energy per year and vans would have needed 18 TWh.
Vans make up only 12% of the fleet but are likely to need 26% of the energy. So, surely the question needs to be whether we are designing our EV charging infrastructure to reflect this imbalance, and how best we might be able to deliver this?
Perhaps more importantly, are we planning now for the total demand of cars and vans in the future? Vehicles will become more efficient but if, magically, all cars and vans switched to electric overnight, we would need an additional 70 TWh per year to support them. The UK currently has an electricity demand of 334 TWh[1] so we’d need to find 20% more power. To put that in perspective, when built, Hinkley Point C will have 2 nuclear reactors generating 26 TWh per year. So, we would need the equivalent of 5 additional reactors to cover the increased vehicle power demand alone.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1094628/DUKES_2022_Chapter_5.pdf
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