FEATURE ELECTRIC VEHICLES
The then-transport minister Philip Hammond suggested that ‘2011 could be remembered as the year the electric car took off’. It wasn’t
As vehicle choice is expanding, new models such as Renault’s quirky Twizy (at £6,690 on the road) and Fluence ZE (£17,850) are offering lower-cost mainstream alternatives to current market leaders such as the Nissan Leaf (£26,500). Renault has adopted a battery rental model to keep upfront costs low and running costs comparable to conventional cars, while ensuring battery quality is maintained. Consumer confidence in EVs as a credible alternative to the conventional petrol or diesel motor is crucial. Range and performance of EVs is also improving all the time, with many of the latest all-electric models boasting ranges of 100 miles or more on a full charge. However, one of the fundamental requirements is having an adequate charging infrastructure for EVs spread across the country, to ease concerns about running out of juice on long journeys.
Range anxiety
Although the latest EVs have improved the range between charges, and an estimated 95 per cent of car trips in Great Britain are less than 25 miles, ‘range anxiety’ – the fear people have about the distance an EV can
24 JUNE 2012
travel between charges, and the concern that the range may not be enough to reach their destination – is still a major issue. One of the crucial ways to address this is by ensuring public charging points are widely available to supplement charging at home or at the office.
But, to some extent, the expansion of EV charging infrastructure in the UK has had a catch-22 element to it – without widely available recharging points there will be no demand for EVs yet, without more EVs on the road, there is no reason to invest in recharging point infrastructure. This is a particularly sensitive issue for local authorities in the context of spending cuts. Clearly, some momentum in the supply of charging points needs to be generated. This is starting to happen. Public EV recharging points are springing up across the UK as a result of both private enterprise and public funding, and schemes that bring the two together. The Department for Transport (DfT) expects the number of public charging points to grow rapidly; its figures show that, up to the end of March 2012, around 6,000 charge points had been installed, with this number set to grow to around 10,000 by 2013. Some 1,140
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