Of course one small sample in one town on a Saturday afternoon does not make solid evidence.
No, it doesn't. In a typical 2 car family that use both for commuting, there may be a newer car and an older car. During the week both are used, during the weekend only one is likely to be used, and that will be the newer one. For what it's worth I went down the road today and saw about 75% of cars were older than 12 plates, so depends on the area you live in.
If a 10 year old nissan leaf is £6k, there's no way the bottom-end of the market is going to be buying electric any time soon. A 2011 Nissan Micra is in the £1-2k range.
A new Nissan micra will cost £15k, and last 10 years at 5,000 miles a year without major expense for about £500 a year in petrol (£1.20/mile, 50mpg), £150 in VED. You might need 2 sets of brake pads in that time, so £30 a year. Total cost about £22k
A leaf will cost you £27k upfront (including subsidy) plus £150 a year in electric (based on 15kWh/100km and 12p/unit). Tyres will cost at least as much as the micra. Lets assume no brake issues. You're talking over £28k.
So you're saving £5k with the petrol version, and getting far more usability (the ability to do occasional cross-country journeys for example)
Electric cars will certainly come to dominate the £40k style range, I'd far rather have a Tesla than an Audi if I were into fancy cars, but for your typical small car used for a commute, there has to be a major collapse at the small end of the market. Trouble is that that will lead the demand for some form of road charging (even if it's a flat price per mile) to offset the money lost from not selling petrol for those cars, and that will further tip the balance away from small electric cars.
Personally my opinion is that, for all but completely rural areas, the future would ideally be "active transport" for short journeys and public transport for longer journeys, accompanied possibly with a system of driverless taxis to cover journeys where there is an important reason to use a private vehicle.
If we can't do an automated railway we're not going to be seeing automated taxis in the next 20 years. If we did, say goodbye to many rail stations. Your idea that public transport will be of any use for the 8,000 people living in the 3 council wards near me with a combined 12 bus services a day shows a lack of understanding of 'rural areas'. Villages with 2,000 people are not completely rural. Some might even have a regular bus service to one town or another.
Take Tarporley for example, 2500 people live in the village, but the surrounding council ward bumps that to 5,000. There's an hourly bus to Chester and one to Nantwich and Crewe. How does someone living in Tarporley get to Winsford, 10 miles away, for work? Northwich?
Elecritc cars will be great, but there are still two issues
1) At 15kwh for 100km, 330b km a year will take 50 TWh per year, requiring a 15% increase in electricity production. Not as bad as I thought, but still a significant amount of extra capacity.
2) 25% of cars are normally parked on the street (or often on the pavement), that's 8 million. How will they charge?
My £20 a year VED isn't remotely covering any road maintenance costs
VED from cars raises about £5b a year.
Councils spend about £1b a year on road maintenence -
https://www.driving.co.uk/news/councils-spent-2bn-road-repairs-since-2017/
Highways agency spends a similar amount -
https://assets.publishing.service.g...ds/attachment_data/file/374676/FOI_712722.pdf
Capital improvements have been costing about £3b a year centrally (councils don't have enough money build new roads outside of s106 agreements), but this is doubling to £6b for the next 5 years.
So for the last 5 years VED alone has covered all road spending, including capital.
Other road related taxes aside from petrol and vat on petrol includes VAT on new cars (3 million cars at say 20k a year = 12b). If everyone walked, where would the money to fill that hole come from?