Boosting the rollout of electric cars

To mark the anniversary of our Road to Zero Strategy, the government is investing £37 million to revolutionise the experience of owning an electric vehicle – helping even more people realise the benefits of such vehicles and speed up our country’s journey to a future with zero net emission of carbon into the earth's atmosphere.

Key facts
  • A year ago this week, the government launched a "Road to Zero" Strategy setting out new measures to clean up road transport and lead the world in developing, manufacturing and using zero emission road vehicles. 
  • The aim is to ensure at least 50 per cent of new car sales are ultra-low emission by 2030 and ending the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040. This is one of the most ambitious targets to protect the environment adopted by any country in the world. 
  • We know that a lack of suitable on-street charging is one of the biggest strategic barriers to mass adoption of electric vehicles – and it is critical that as many people as possible can access quality electric vehicle charging infrastructure. 
  • The £37 million will support twelve engineering projects that could massively expand the chargepoint network for those without off-street parking. 

Why this matters:

The UK’s transition to zero emission vehicles is going further and faster than ever. By ensuring the charging infrastructure for electric vehicles is reliable and innovative, we can encourage more people to join the record numbers of ultra-low emission vehicle users already on UK roads.

Comments

Jim said…
a big problem is charging time, now I am aware that there are rapid chargers in service stations on the M6 and things, and yeah great. but they still take the best part of an hour.

Think about that just for a moment, Everyone needs around one hour to fill their car, put that in terms of the petrol stations pumps. imagine the queues at the pelican :)
Chris Whiteside said…
Indeed, the Petrol Station model of charging electric cars does not work well - people will have to charge their car while they sleep or while they get a meal.
Jim said…
Yes that is true enough. My car (none plug in hybrid atm) spends 95% of its life doing short local trips. So to work and back, to the supermarket, to the start of a Hike etc so for that an electric car would be ideal.

The same applies to My wife's car.

5% of the time though one or both of us want to do a longer trip which is beyond the range from home charging, the only option there is to pull over and charge on the motor way service station (or other charger just off the motorway See Zapmap.com) Any hows, yes its true you can stop and have a meal, depending on time of day of course, but that is just it. if every other car on the M6 is electric and everyone is thinking the same thing, each car taking an hour to charge, its not long before all are in use.

Its for this very reason, when its time to change cars, that I am thinking of switching to an EV and a PHEV, short trips to work or to shops are all electric, but we would still have the crutch of the ICE in the PHEV.

Anonymous said…
Moving from petrol cars to electric cars doesn't solve anything all it does is shift the location of some of the pollution. To claim they are zero emission vehicles is laughable. It's like your environmentally friendly diesels all over again.
Chris Whiteside said…
Depends how you are generating the electricity.

If it has been generated by burning coal, the suggestion that you are only shifting the location of the pollution would be perfectly correct.

If however you are moving your electricity generation over to very low carbon generation such as renewables and nuclear - which is the plan - then electric cars will generate much less pollution than petrol or diesel powered ones.
Jim said…
Always an interesting discussion. Electric cars run on electricity no matter how its produced. They dont mind where it's from. So yes some methods of generation will cause pollution, others less so. The one point I do like to make to people objecting to electric cars on the grounds they pollute as much as ICE cars is to look up how much electricity is used by a refinery to produce petrol from oil. You may be in for a shock. Though it's fair to say that a refinery just like a car, does not care how the electricity was produced. So they will run on renewable and nuclear as well.
Jim said…
And this is an interesting discussion to the point that i would certainly welcome a meeting in Costa with Chris and Mr/Mrs/Miss Anonymous to discuss.
Chris Whiteside said…
I'm up for that if Mr/Ms Anonymous would like to make themselves known, or just with Jim if they won't.
Jim said…
Sounds good to me, if Mr/Mrs/Miss anonymous wants to come along that's great, have a few days to think it over, if not will arrange a day/time and choose a costa back half of next week Chris.
Chris Whiteside said…
Note that there is a new thread on this subject with another HMG announcement about charging points.

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