Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (First sitting)

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Rob Marris]

Q The insurance provisions in the Bill would be sufficient to cover what I think you call a level 5 vehicle, which could be carrying a seven-year-old on their own.

David Williams: Absolutely.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Q I want to explore some issues of public confidence in the potential uptake of autonomous vehicles and get your views on whether the Bill goes far enough to set the scene. Given that the technology is available, what measures are required to make the public accept it and want to take it up? We have heard about the confusion and resistance, perhaps, because of the different approach to electric vehicles, but what do you think is required for the future in the Bill?

Steve Gooding: First, the Government are right to focus on the insurance angle, because that strikes me and the foundation as the first thing that needs sorting for all the reasons that the Committee is thinking about. Following that, what will affect the public’s willingness to accept the technology is their sense that it is genuinely safe. It is understandable that the Bill is silent on such things as construction and use standards, because they will need to be negotiated in an international forum. That is definitely something—the Minister knows we have flagged this up—to get on with thinking about. How you move away from a construction and use safety regulation system that is very much based on traditional mechanical engineering to one that is based far more closely on one that we apply to human drivers, because we are dealing with artificial intelligence, needs a bit of a boost.

David Williams: I think that we need to be vocal about the capability of the technology. We often quote statistics: for instance, automated emergency braking systems reduce accidents by 15% and injuries by 18%, so even if they do not avoid the accident completely, they slow the vehicle faster than a human would and reduce injuries. That is one small component of what will be the driverless cars of the future.

We need to show people the testing regime that these vehicles will undergo before they are let loose on the road, but it is natural to expect some nervousness and resistance. I do not know if any of you have seen the trailer for the new “Fast and Furious” movie, “The Fate of the Furious”, where robot cars get taken over. That will not help and, therefore, we need to be particularly vocal about the positive benefits. I fundamentally believe that we will see fewer deaths on the roads and much safer roads and, therefore, we need to do whatever we can to encourage adoption.

There is also a massively positive business case in the haulage industry for the adoption of connected and autonomous vehicles. I think we may see more rapid adoption in the commercial vehicle space. People will then get used to being around autonomous vehicles, even if they are commercial vehicles and that will make the adoption at a personal level easier.

Denis Naberezhnykh: I would add that some excellent work is happening in the UK now. A project called MOVE-UK compares and contrasts the different styles of vehicle automation and how an autonomous vehicle would perform in the same situation that a human driver performs in. That kind of comparison and learning will enable those automated vehicles and semi-autonomous functionalities to be as palatable to users as possible, so that there is the least amount of discomfort or worrying about the functionality when they try those vehicles out for the first time. It will be the first early adopters—early users—who will form an opinion and then spread the word about whether it works or whether they feel comfortable or not. Getting that right is important and some great work is already happening in the UK to try to do that.

David Wong: I have four brief points on increasing acceptance. One is on messaging. In addition to what Steve has just mentioned about showing the public that the technology is genuinely safe, we have to be very careful, particularly with regard to the Bill, with public messaging in relation to insurance, to assure the public that this will not result in a hike in insurance. The public will rightly expect that the lowering of risks and fewer accidents will mean that insurance premiums should come down.

The second point is about convincing the public through public demonstration projects. We are pleased that the Government are backing a number of these collaborative R and D and demonstration in live trial projects. We would like to see some of the learning coming out of these projects on how the public might interact with autonomous vehicles.

Thirdly, on public demonstration projects, going forward, perhaps the consumer can pay, not unlike the very successful Go Ultra Low campaign for ultra low emission vehicles. It may be useful for connected autonomous vehicles at the right point in time, and particularly at the point when vehicle manufacturers are ready to deploy these vehicles on UK roads.

Lastly, we think as an industry that the gradual escalation of the levels of automation can perhaps help Joe Public to be more comfortable with the technology, as opposed to asking Joe Public to jump straight into a vehicle with no steering wheel from day one.

[The Chair]

We had better get a move on. Briefly, if you can.

[Drew Hendry]

Q Very briefly, in terms of public confidence and liability issues, you mentioned safety. Do you feel the Bill should address public confidence in the maintenance of vehicles? How will that be conducted across the different standards?

Steve Gooding: We need the construction of new standards for whether a vehicle is judged road-worthy in the first place, to the subsequent—as we call it—MOT system, which continues to verify over time that that road-worthiness is being maintained. We need both systems to cope with the new technology.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Q I am conscious that cars can be converted to use LPG if they are petrol. It seems to me that potentially they could be converted to use hydrogen, as well. Mr Wong, is that something that the industry has considered?

David Wong: It is certainly in the mix. Cars today are being retrofitted as dual fuel vehicles, so, hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. For example, a company in the north-west called ULEMCo is doing that with a good degree of success. It is important to look at the outcome from such a conversion. Will it help to achieve the targets? Will it be below 75 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre? The jury is still out on that, to be honest. We need to see whether technologies can help over a period of time to decarbonise road transport, not simply the conversion of any sort of technologies or even the hybridisation of any of these fuels.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Finally and—we have two minutes—very briefly, Drew Hendry.

[Drew Hendry]

Q I wanted to cover the issues of liability a little bit further, but I suspect we are going to run out of time before I can get an answer to those—in particular situations where there might be, for example, someone who is incapacitated in the vehicle. If they are incapacitated because of ill health, or for other reasons such as alcohol consumption, where would the liability sit, with such issues? Does the legislation need to go into more detail about some of those other causes? You mentioned the maintenance regime earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I am sure that our panel will handle it. You do not all have to answer everything.

Robert Evans: I am happy to make a start. The first thing to say is that the UK Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Association and the industry support the progress of the Bill and believe that it is an appropriate set of powers for the Government to seek. As the industry views it, the Bill effectively says that the deployment of electric vehicle infrastructure into the market is progressing. The market is working, and it is likely to deliver the solutions for motorists to access those charge points easily, and for those charge points to become a sustainable asset on which businesses can be built. What the Bill recognises is that there is a stage by which the Government will step away from some of the seeding activities that they have done, in terms of creating different schemes such as Plugged-in Places, national infrastructure programmes and funding that it has put in, and let the market progress.

The Bill gives the Government an insurance policy, which is that they can act if the market does not deliver in any particular important aspect that starts to stall the uptake of electric vehicles. The view is that the market is progressing well, and these are reserve powers that the Government might wish to take later. Therein will lie the detail about what the particular nub of a problem might be on which the Government will need to intervene. At the moment we have 11,000 charge points in the UK; we have a lot of private sector finance investment interested in investing in the commercial operation of charge point networks and the further deployment of charge points. That is to be commended. At this stage the Government just need to have this insurance policy in the Bill so that they can act should they need to, but they should expect that the market will deliver.

Quentin Willson: The critical thing is the availability of rapid chargers. Rapid chargers are the game changer. You can charge your car within 30 minutes to 80% of its battery life. Therefore, you can do multiple charges in a day, bringing the feasible range from this notional 130 miles for a Nissan LEAF to as much as 300 miles. I did a journey from Birmingham to Milton Keynes and back, charged twice at a rapid charger and arrived at Milton Keynes with 90 miles still on my battery range. So the Bill must make sure that these rapid chargers are rolled out much more and we see many more at motorway service stations and at key points within cities, because they will enable people to believe that their range is much wider than they are led to believe.

[Drew Hendry]

Q I have a follow-up question on the infrastructure for charging points. Does more consideration need to be given in the Bill to connecting with different modes of transport—an intermodal approach? Or is it sufficient just to say, “There shall be charging points”?

Quentin Willson: What do you mean by “different modes of transport”?

[Drew Hendry]

For example, electric vehicles being able to connect with hubs at airports, railways, ports and so forth. Is enough thought being given to how the network will develop?

Quentin Willson: We need some intelligence on where these peak points are likely to be. It needs to be spread as widely as possible. Ultimately, the superordinate goal is wireless charging in the roads and as you park. The Bill needs to be aware of that as well. That is a technology that would revolutionise the whole EV market, but it is still some time away. There needs to be a charger in as many places as possible where there is public access—supermarkets, schools, businesses—especially in rural areas.

Marcus Stewart: The evidence we submitted focused on the impact on the electricity system, in terms of capacity and the role of smart charging, and rapid chargers help in that because they help people charge away from peak times. If you have rapid chargers at motorway service stations or supermarkets, where people can charge during the day, rather than charging in the evening at home, that smooths out the impact of the demand for energy. It makes for much more efficient usage of the energy system that we already have and allows us to accommodate more electrical vehicles.

Robert Evans: Charging at train stations is a very good idea, because the vehicle is parked there and they can start to be used for managed charging applications—vehicle to grid and the like. That is a very positive trend. There has been national infrastructure funding for railway stations, and that is an appropriate use. With airports, it depends. For long duration, if you are parked for two weeks while away on holiday, it is less of an issue. The rapid charger becomes a more useful item when you pick up your car, quickly fill with electricity and then move on. So more charge points in motorway service areas is definitely a good thing, and more dwell points that aid intermodal transport, so you take your electric vehicle and get on the train, for example, rather than adding to congestion in a city centre.

[Mr Hayes]

Q I want to ask about the effect of demand on the grid. You dealt with it after I signalled my intention to ask the question, but further to that, does the industry need to think a bit about how it could incentivise people charging at different points? There is a history of this, with Economy 7 and all kinds of other things. Are there ways in which the industry could respond by encouraging people to charge in the way you describe? On the point about the distribution of infrastructure, what about rural areas? The Bill provides powers for the Government to do more. Have we done enough or could we do more to ensure the spread of infrastructure? It is fine to have these things in supermarkets and at motorway service stations, but that does not really help my constituents in Surfleet Seas End or Gedney Drove End, who are a very long way from either. What do you think?

Quentin Willson: Rural charging is an issue that we should look at very hard, because otherwise we will have a disconnected electric community and there will be the connected and the unconnected. Scotland has been extremely good at this—Scottish Enterprise has financed quite a bit of it. We need to look at these rural areas, decide what the best place is and give a concerted route through rural areas where you have rapid chargers so that those communities can run electric cars with the same benefits as people in conurbations.

Marcus Stewart: Going back to the point about how the energy industry can respond, the industry has experience. I am a system operator, but the supply side can offer different tariffs for charging at different times. That is quite a popular approach. You mentioned Economy 7. I know people who have electric vehicles who use the Economy 7 meter to get a cheaper charge by charging their vehicle at a time when the system is under less stress. There are options like that.

Looking further into the future, when you have many more people using electric vehicles, there will be an opportunity for electric vehicles themselves, through some sort of consolidation, to provide services back to the system to enable balancing—“vehicle to grid” is a term that is used. There could be opportunities for suppliers to offer different tariffs to allow people to participate. There are lots of options there. We would say that the technology in the chargers needs to be smart enough to be able to do that. That allows you to optimise the value of the charging system and the car to the consumer, and also the overall cost to the total energy system. If you can optimise that, the total cost will be lower than it would be if you had effectively unabated charging.

Robert Evans: You raised two points. The first was about rural areas. At this stage, infrastructure follows the deployment of vehicles. The more vehicles there are, the more there is a case to deploy electric vehicle infrastructure to support them. In rural areas, we have a situation where you often have to travel a long distance to get to a petrol station, because there are fewer and fewer in those areas. That is an example of how charging your electric vehicle at home and occasionally using public charging makes an electric vehicle quite a virtuous vehicle to drive.

On your point about incentivisation on the grid management side—smart charging—we have a progression: the benefit of smart and managed charging is that it mitigates investments that the distribution network operator has to make in copper in the ground, for example. We need to work out how the incentives travel from the beneficiary—the reduced investment on the part of the DNO—through tariffs to the EV driver so that the EV driver is effectively part of the smart charging proposition and we do not have a situation where the smart charging proposition occurs without them being involved in the loop.