Electric van uptake is being held back in the UK by operators having to wait up to 15 years for grid connections to their depots.
This is leaving businesses ‘grid-locked’, with the grid connection queue growing tenfold over the past five years alone.
Trade body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is now demanding immediate action. It wants a recent government promise to fast-track grid connections for data centres, wind farms and solar power installations to be extended to transport depots.
Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said, “We cannot deliver net zero and improve air quality without decarbonising commercial vehicles. But if operators have to wait up to 15 years just to be able to plug them into their depots, there is no case for investment.
“Prioritising grid connections, alongside reform to planning and action on energy costs, would reduce barriers to adoption, ensuring commercial vehicles continue to carry the loads that keep our economy on the move whilst doing the heavy lifting the nation needs to reach net zero.”
Hawes was speaking at the CV Show 2025 in Birmingham, the country’s biggest annual show for the commercial vehicle industry.
Zero emission van targets
The fact that electric van uptake is being delayed is bad news for the UK’s ZEV Mandate. Along with electric cars, there are strict ZEV Mandate targets for vans too. In 2025, 16 percent of new van sales are meant to be electric.
Sales are, however, running at little more than half that, at 8.3 per cent so far in 2025. And while the mix might reach 25 percent by the end of 2027, this is still below the mandate target of 34 percent.
By 2030, 70 percent of new van sales in the UK are supposed to be electric – and from 2035, all new van sales must be electric.
The industry believes that without action to speed up infrastructure, these government targets simply won’t be met. Indeed, one company, FleetCheck, is warning the government may have to revisit the ZEV Mandate for vans as soon as 2026.
“By next year, it seems likely that it will become clear the gap between the real van maket and ZEV Mandate projections are unbridgeable, and that further action will have to be taken,” said FleetCheck MD Peter Golding.
Commercial vehicles in Britain
As well as 36 million cars, there are 5.1 million vans on UK roads – and around 626,000 trucks.
They transport more than 80 percent of all domestic freight, adding £13.5 billion to the economy each year.
Overall, commercial vehicles make up 14 percent of all the vehicles on Britain’s roads. However, their higher mileages and poorer efficiency mean they are responsible for more than a third of all road transport CO2 emissions.
Overall, commercial vehicles are responsible for 12 per cent of the UK’s total carbon footprint. Transitioning the entire fleet would deliver a CO2 savings greater than the total carbon footprint of Sweden.
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