How do cities support electric vehicles and what difference does it make?

•Cities climate strategies in the UK support EV uptake but don't provide enough infrastructure.•Implemented strategies are ineffectual in the EV uptake and infrastructure provision.•Better strategies and implementation plans are needed by national and local government.•Policies should be supported by local investment into public charging infrastructure.

Many cities publish climate change mitigation strategies and other policy measures to support the wide spread uptake of Electric Vehicles (EVs). This paper investigates the effectiveness of these strategies and the provision of infrastructures in 30 UK cities, with a specific emphasis on those strategies that are within the remit of cities and local authorities. The climate mitigation strategies and supporting documents were obtained from 30 UK cities recommended by the Urban Audit Methodology. We show that 13 cities mention EVs in their strategies. Analysing EV registrations and the EV infrastructures that is provided by cities we found that there is no statistical difference in the number of charging points or EVs between the cities that have EVs as part of their climate change mitigation strategy and those that do not. It was shown that EV uptake was more generally associated with other factors (such as local vehicle population or income) rather than any documented EV/climate mitigation strategy. We demonstrate that local strategies are failing in achieving the much needed step change and make suggestions how to improve EV uptake as an even more radical thinking and policies may become necessary to achieve carbon reduction targets.