Milton Keynes: The best city for electric cars
Milton Keynes is one of the best cities to drive an electric vehicle with a range of options to make charging your car a convenient and reliable experience.
In Sept 2022, The DVLA revealed the top five cities for the most electric vehicle registrations in the UK, with Milton Keynes taking fourth place with over 23,500 registrations. Milton Keynes also tops the statistics for having the most chargers per head of population (outside of London). Thinking of switching to electric? You are in the right place.
Explore the benefits
Want to learn more about electric vehicles and charging? Visit NEVIS knowledge and insights.
If you would like to explore the real costs and benefits of swapping to an Electric vehicle, please try this handy cost comparison tool as a starting point.
Charging up
Milton Keynes has continued to accelerate the numbers of charge points across the City and now has over 800 public charge points, with even more planned for 2024. We have a selection of Fast, Rapid and Ultra-Rapid chargers to give you choice for an longer overnight charge or a quick top up charge.
Milton Keynes was one of the first city’s to build an Ultra-Rapid hub with eight high power chargers. It is located at MK Coachway, just off the M1 at Junction 14 and provides access to café facilities while you top up your car.
View our interactive map to find a charge point near you.
Our Charging Partners operate payment schemes that offer pay as you go or for more regular users, a subscription scheme may be more cost effective. Please visit our Partners websites and apps for more detailed information on payment options.
Parking in CMK
Did you know that there are 173 on-street electric vehicle only parking spaces in Central Milton Keynes. Each parking space has a fully operational charging unit.
The Council also offers a green permit for electric vehicle owners. The permit enables electric vehicles to in over 10,000 on-street standard tariff parking spaces without the need to pay the standard tariff parking charges. The current cost of the Green Permit is £315 per year.
Find out how to apply for a Green Parking Permit.
Electric Vehicle Car Club
Milton Keynes has partnered with Enterprise Car Club to give members access to a combination of electric and hybrid vehicles. The vehicles are located on-street for convenience. Click here to find out more and rent a car club vehicle.
Electric Vehicle Network Update
We are working hard to keep our existing network reliable and expand our electric vehicle charging network to make charging your car as convenient as possible. These are our latest projects:
Charger Transformation Programme
This programme is replacing our legacy chargers with new chargers to keep out charging network reliable and up to date. Following on from our press release in Nov 2022, the transformation programme is progressing well.
Phase 1 is complete. This phase was like for like replacements of both Fast chargers and Rapid chargers around CMK bringing them up to current electrical safety standards and replacing chargers that could no longer be repaired.
Phase 2 is underway. This phase is also in CMK and requires additional works to replace the electricity connection to bring the equipment up to current safety standards. We have also taken the opportunity to increase our offering of Rapid chargers in some locations. We expect to complete this phase in 2023/24.
This programme of work is at no cost to MKCC and is a requirement within our current contract with our supplier BP Pulse for operating and maintaining our EV chargers.
ORCS – on-street residential charging scheme
The Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) had a funding opportunity for local authorities to submit applications to deliver on-street charging solutions for residents with no access to charging at home (i.e. driveway). Milton Keynes was successful in receiving over £400,000 funding and in partnership with our supplier, BP Pulse, we are delivering 117 new chargepoints at 17 residential locations around Milton Keynes in 2023/24
LEVI – Local electric vehicle infrastructure scheme
The Office of Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) has allocated MKCC £1.6 million from the Local Electric Vehicles Infrastructure (LEVI) fund to expand our provision of EV charging infrastructure across Milton Keynes. We are looking to identify 35 residential locations to expand our charging network with around 400 new charge points and are working with our suppliers to deliver this scheme over the coming years.
Lamp Post Charging Trials
We have teamed up with suppliers Chargy and Ubitricity to begin trials of lamp post chargers around the residential areas of Milton Keynes. The trials are taking place in 2023/24 and will help us decide if a larger rollout of this technology around the streets of Milton Keynes is beneficial for our residents. The trials are being funded by the suppliers so no cost to MKCC.
