All-EV showroom opens in the UK

UK magazine Autocar reports that a British car-charging firm, Chargemaster, has opened an electric vehicle showroom in the English town of Milton Keynes, a place better known as the home for Red Bull Racing's F1 team.

Named the EV Experience Centre, the showroom can handle up to 10 test vehicles, all charged on site. Visitors to the showroom can elect to test a vehicle briefly, choosing among models from Volkswagen, BMW, Kia, Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi models. Customers seriously in the market for an electric vehicle are invited to take one for a seven-day test.

But actually signing up to take delivery of a new car is a job for the individual brands' dealers in the area, not the Chargemaster showroom.

Curiously too, none of Tesla's products are promoted through the EV Experience Centre. Nevertheless, says David Martell, CEO of Chargemaster, staff at the showroom are only too willing to put customers in touch with Tesla.

"We have all types of EV on the wider Chargemaster fleet and we know very well that Teslas are fine cars. We'll be delighted to put any visitor in touch with a Tesla dealer," he told Autocar.

Five years ago, EV sales amounted to just 5000 units in the UK. Since then, annual sales have grown to 100,000 cars a year. That's still a tiny percentage of total vehicle sales in the UK – 2.7 million last year – but the growth of electric vehicles shows no signs of slackening. Chargemaster anticipates the nation's rate of EV sales could increase by 50 per cent within three years – from 100,000 vehicles currently to 150,000 – according to the report.

And by 2022, there could be as many as one million electric vehicles on British roads.

Picture courtesy of Chargemaster/Facebook