8 February 2021
The AA estimates up to half a million drivers in London and Birmingham will be priced out of city driving in 2021 thanks to clean air zone charges.
London's ULEZ is set to expand in October, with a daily charge of £12.50 and Birmingham drivers will be stung with a £8 daily charge for driving a non-compliant vehicle into the city centre.1
London's Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras have picked up a non-compliance rate of 16% among petrol vehicles and 42% among diesel.1
Among Inner London's 2019 car population of 194,200 diesel and 513,600 petrol models, 163,700 are likely to be non-compliant. Add the 91,200 non-compliant cars in outer London boroughs of Barnet, Brent, Greenwich and Waltham Forest where large swathes are within the expanded ULEZ, and then thousands more in lesser affected boroughs of Ealing (Acton), Hounslow (Chiswick), Richmond upon Thames (Barnes), and Redbridge (Wanstead), and the total number of affected cars owned by London residents alone will be between 250,000 and 300,000.2
On top of that, in June 2018, the London mayor 'estimated that 100,000 cars, 35,000 vans and 3,000 lorries might be affected by the expanded zone and tighter standards every day'.3 The majority are likely to come from the 1.952 million cars owned by outer London residents as a whole and the tens of thousands commuting in each day from outside London.
The AA estimates that the additional 100,000 cars currently coming from outside the expanded outer London ULEZ and another 100,000 in Birmingham (42% of the city's 296,500 diesel cars = 124,530 and 12% of its 337,700 petrol cars = 40,500) creates the potential for up to half a million cars to be denied access to the two inner cities – or forced to pay the daily penalty charges.
AA car leasing
The AA offers an accessible way into EV market for drivers facing crippling city access charges.
The vehicles from AA car leasing are compliant with clean air zone emission standards, and come with vehicle tax and delivery included.
For more information visit theaa.com/leasing
1 According to Zap Map, the fuel cost for a 15-mile round-trip in an electric Vauxhall Corsa is 85p cheaper than in the petrol equivalent. Zap Map calculates electricity cost from an average of 16.5 p/KwH. However, the website itemises off-peak charging costs as low as 5p to 6p/KwH, As well as the potential for charging the electric vehicle at nearly a third of the average cost, an electric vehicle doesn't suffer the added petrol consumption of stop-start city driving.