Electric Vehicles: Promotion

Nick Fletcher Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered promotion of electric vehicle usage.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the Minister for taking time to come and listen to the debate. I first refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Can you hear that? No, you cannot. That is the sound of an electric vehicle. Quiet, isn’t it? Now breathe in through your nose—even those with masks on. Please breathe in, a big sniff. Can you smell anything? No. Again, there is nothing to smell. No nasty gases polluting the air we breathe; no noise polluting the sound of birds singing. Okay; we get the picture. It may be a little dramatic, but none the less it is all very true. That is our future, and it is not far away. In fact, if the Minister and the Government really want to, they can bring this vehicle revolution here within the next five years.

Now there is a stumbling block. Well, it is a few blocks that make a wall, but there really is only one wall now. You see, as time has moved on, so have the cars. Even as little as five years ago, electric cars were being produced but they were very expensive. Many listening to this debate may think that that is still the case. I am not going to tell you that they are cheap, but apparently the cost that makes a car affordable these days is around £36,000 and, thankfully, that is where we are today.

That is the lower end of the market, yes, and £36,000 is still a large amount of money, but it is at least comparable to a diesel or petrol vehicle. Many people buy these vehicles on personal contract purchase, so the actual capital cost is never paid in a lump sum, but rather as a deposit and a monthly figure which usually covers the depreciation. Electric cars tend to hold their money very well, so the monthly payments should be at least as competitive, if not better.

Electric cars are also phenomenally cheap to run. The average cost of a 100-mile journey in a diesel is £12; in an electric vehicle it is £7. Servicing costs are also much lower. With fewer moving parts, there is a lot less to go wrong. Most electric vehicles have fewer than 20 moving parts. Wherever you get moving parts, you get wear through friction. That usually means maintenance or failure, so it is obvious that the fewer the moving parts, the better. Electric vehicles brake through regeneration, too, so brake pad wear is minimal. With no exhaust, no oil to change, no filters—you get the picture.

If cost is not holding us back, what is? Is it distance? Again, that used to be the case. However, most electric vehicles do much more than 200 miles now, and although that can drop in the winter months as batteries and occupants need to be kept warm, most vehicles will easily do 130 miles. As the average journey in the UK is less than 10 miles, range is not the big issue any more.

I should like to take a minute to help everyone to recharge their electric vehicle. Electric vehicles are not like petrol or diesel vehicles, which a person would quite happily drive around with less than half a tank, and would definitely not fill up every day. However, with an electric vehicle, if you can, you should. There are two main reasons for that.

First, unlike with a petrol or diesel car, when your car is parked your EV will lose charge. That is because the batteries look after themselves with a slight amount of warmth, and there are lots of electronics that are always using power, so invariably you will lose around 1% a day. If you have to make an emergency journey or take a spontaneous day out—when we are not in lockdown—unless you are fully charged, you are not going. I think it was Elon Musk who said, ABC—always be charging. That is okay if you have a home charge unit, but if not, we need multiple fast-charging units everywhere.

Secondly, no one wants to wait three to four hours for their car to be charged, so the charging points need to be at least 60 kW, preferably 120 kW. Thirdly, I should mention the reliability of charge points; that is so important. Turning up to an EV station with a faulty or damaged unit is not fun, and unlike running out of fuel, a person cannot just call dad, as I know my daughter would, for a gallon of petrol. An electric vehicle just does not work like that—if you run out of charge, you are stuck—so charging points must be reliable.

Finally, the payment system for the charge points needs to be contactless. People need to be able to drive up, plug in, pay when ready and drive away. Contactless payment must be the way. The Government should work with stakeholders to ensure that contactless facilities are fitted to all new and existing charge points.

Those are the four stumbling blocks—the wall that is getting in the way of increased electric vehicle usage: the lack of charging points, the size of those points, their unreliability and the lack of contactless facilities. How can we overcome that wall?

Let me start by saying that we are trying—that is for sure. The announcement that no more internal combustion engines are to be registered after 2030 has definitely made the industry sit up and look at the issue more seriously. We are currently installing many charging points, but we need many more rapid units now. How can we do that?

We need to remove some of the existing incentives in the automobile sector and reinvest the money into EV charging point infrastructure. Currently, we are discounting cars and the cost of chargers at home and discounting vehicle excise duty and company car tax. Yet the cost of cars is falling, and will fall even more as the big auto companies such as Volkswagen, BMW and Ford start coming on board and producing more of their own electric vehicles.

The current voucher scheme for home charging is too complicated and does not really offer any huge savings to the end customer. Furthermore, as electric vehicles are becoming cheaper and cheaper to run, tax incentives will soon not be needed. If those moneys were redirected to further charging infrastructure projects, the automotive industry, which contributes much of our greenhouse gas emissions, could really lead the way to our net zero target.

Although I think the Government should change course slightly, I also thank the Minister for what they have done so far, and what they have already set out to do. The Government are investing £1.3 billion; £950 million of that is going directly into rapid charging projects. I know from my many meetings with stakeholders that the investment is more than welcome. The Government are investing a further £90 million into local EV charging schemes, which local councils can apply for. The financing scheme is also a massive help and I hope that many businesses use it.

Some currently say that battery technology will get even better, while others stress that, while it will take time to get the charging points installed, they will come along eventually. I cannot stress how important it is that Ministers do not adopt that attitude, and instead move much more quickly. Why? It is obvious that fewer customers are buying electric vehicles due to that anxiety and the distance between charge points. That range anxiety is what is really stopping people buying these fantastic vehicles. The answer is to have high-powered rapid charging stations everywhere.

A 300-mile-range vehicle with a high-powered charging can take as little as 20 minutes to give in excess of 150 miles’ charge. That is 75 miles in less than 10 minutes. That is obviously what we need—for EV charging points to be installed with the same frequency as petrol stations, well-lit and ideally under cover.

A perfect example is Gridserve in Essex. Its charging forecourt is clean, safe and has a lounge—not that it is really needed—shopping and a Costa Coffee. It has easy payment methods, too. Existing forecourt operators need to be taking this revolution seriously. With the Government’s backing in the initial stage, it could be great for the customer and also profitable enough for the private sector to get involved and really push it forward.

I believe that the Government should taper off grants for home charging grant schemes by the end of the year, and do the same with electric car grants. Furthermore, we should look at the slow removal of company car tax benefits and vehicle excise duty benefits. With the savings made on removing those incentives, we should redirect the moneys into furthering the rapid charging network, so that anxiety is a thing of the past.

I also urge the Government to consider a proposal from Policy Exchange for a California-style zero-emission-vehicle mandate, which would require manufacturers to sell more electric or hydrogen vehicles each year. There should also be fines for companies that poorly maintain their charging points, and contactless payment must be mandatory. If we do that, the take-up of such vehicles will be huge.

I want to mention a final issue, on which I hope to secure a debate later in the year: artificial intelligence. With electric vehicles, the public are seeing the power of artificial intelligence. I am talking about self-driving cars. This is the first real step into the future, and none of us really understands it, so I make one further ask: will the Minister discuss the effects of AI with all her colleagues as a matter of urgency? I believe that there will be many benefits from AI over the years to come, but unless it is regulated now, the positive effects might be far outweighed by the negative effects that AI has on society.

One final time: can you hear that, Sir Edward? No. Well, that is an electric vehicle.