Britain's fuel crisis has intensified interest in electric vehicles, based on the record level of inquiries at one online auto marketplace.
Auto Trader Group said on Monday that dealers received direct inquiries for EVs every 1.8 minutes this past weekend, almost twice the average pace in August. Total EV queries jumped 36 percent from the weekend before.
Views of advertisements for new and used EVs, meantime, rose by 28 percent and 61 percent, respectively, on Auto Trader. EVs made up four of the top five new cars in terms of ad views, with Hyundai's Ioniq 5 and Ford's Mustang Mach-E leading the pack.
The spike "suggests that people are not simply flirting with the idea of electric but have been encouraged to actively pursue a purchase," said Ian Plummer, Auto Trader's commercial director. Dealers with electric cars in stock are likely to do "particularly well" this week, he added.
In an analysis of Google search data, Carguide.co.uk found that online searches for electric cars in the UK rose by 1,600 percent on Sept. 24 -- the date when fuel shortages became widespread across the country.
