Version: 1.0 | Published: 3 Nov 2026 | Updated: 4 days ago
UK Private Battery-Electric Vehicle Registrations
Dataset
Summary
Description:
This dataset is a harmonised small-area record of private battery-electric vehicle (BEV) ownership across the United Kingdom, derived from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) quarterly vehicle-licensing statistics published by the Department fo
Access Tier:
Open
Contact Point:
Documentation
Documentation:
This dataset is a harmonised small-area record of private battery-electric vehicle (BEV) ownership across the United Kingdom, derived from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) quarterly vehicle-licensing statistics published by the Department for Transport. It pairs licensed-vehicle counts with the 2021/22 UK Output Area Classification (OAC) so that BEV uptake can be read against the geodemographic character of each neighbourhood. Two DVLA tables underpin it: VEH0125 (all licensed vehicles by body type and keepership) and VEH0135 (licensed vehicles by fuel type and keepership), each published per small area. Through a process of filtering to the privately-kept, licensed fleet and appending OAC, three vehicle measures are created: a total private-vehicle count, a battery-electric count, and a BEV penetration rate (BEVs ÷ all private vehicles × 100). These are produced for 43,915 small areas across the United Kingdom and for 57 quarters spanning 2011 Q4 to 2025 Q4. The small-area geographies comprise Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales, Data Zones (DZs) in Scotland, and Super Data Zones (SDZs) in Northern Ireland, all carried under a single LSOA21CD key.
## Content
The data store contains a CSV and GPKG, for every small area, the total-vehicle count, BEV count and BEV penetration rate in two forms; the latest single quarter and the median across the four quarters of the latest full year (2025) together with the area's OAC Supergroup, Group and Subgroup codes.
## Quality, Representation and Bias
The data are compiled from the official DVLA vehicle-licensing statistics, an administrative count of the licensed vehicle stock rather than a survey, captured at the end of each calendar quarter. They are an Official Statistic and are subject to the publisher's quality and disclosure procedures.
Users should note that:
* Cell suppression. Counts below five are suppressed in the source ([c]) and are read as missing; about 7,250 areas have a suppressed battery-electric count in the latest quarter, and areas suppressed in every quarter of the year carry no annual median. Penetration rates for very small fleets are correspondingly uncertain.
* An unallocated "Miscellaneous" record. DVLA assigns vehicles whose keeper location cannot be resolved to a specific small area to a single Miscellaneous bucket (≈47,000 private vehicles, with an atypically high apparent BEV share). It is retained in the CSV for completeness.
* Licensing is not ownership. The figures count licensed, privately-kept vehicles by keeper location; company-kept vehicles are excluded, and the keeper address need not be where a vehicle is principally used. "BEV penetration" is the battery-electric share of all private licensed vehicles (the DVLA Total body type, which includes motorcycles and other vehicles), not of cars alone.
* Revisions. The DVLA series are subject to regular minor revision across their whole length; the publisher specifically lists ultra-low-emission and plug-in vehicle counts among the measures revised as data are reassessed, so the most recent quarters may change in later releases.
Coverage
Spatial
Spatial Coverage:
United Kingdom
Temporal
Start Date:
01 January 2025
End Date:
31 December 2025
Date of First Release:
18 August 2026
Provenance
Origin
Source:
Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA)
Collection Situation:
- LSOA21CD
- DZ21CD
- NI SOA21CD
Author 1
Family Name Person:
Singleton
Given Name Person:
Alex
Access and Governance
Access
Access Service:
The data for this research have been provided by the Geographic Data Service (GeoDS), a Smart Data Research UK Investment: ES/Z504464/1.
Data Controller:
Geographic Data Service
Licence:
UK Open Government Licence (OGL)
Format and Standards
Format:
- CSV
- application/geopackage+sqlite3
- HTML