UK electric vehicle market soars

More than 30,000 battery-electric cars have been sold in the UK in the first three months of 2021.

That means the UK has now overtaken France to become Europe’s second-largest electric car market.

About 31,800 battery-electric cars were sold in the UK in the first three months of the year, compared with just over 30-thousand in France.’

2020 was the first year in which European consumers bought more than half a million electric cars. That is expected to double to 1m sales by the end of this year.

Green Lithium has secured funding to build Europe’s first large-scale lithium refinery to enable the UK to produce electric vehicles batteries at home. 

There is currently no commercial lithium refining capability of scale in Europe, leaving the continent’s rapidly growing electric vehicle (EV) and sustainable energy storage sectors reliant on China. 

Green Lithium aims to fill the missing link in the EV supply chain, by using the grant to connect the UK and Europe’s lithium battery manufacturers with abundant sources of lithium.