Electric and Low-emission Vehicles

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) on securing the debate. I must admit to being a petrol-head, or rather a diesel and steam-head. Nevertheless, I understand that although it is important that we preserve our historic vehicle heritage, we should also look to a more sustainable future. I assure the House that the Government are committed to positioning the United Kingdom as a world leader in electric vehicle uptake and manufacture.

Under the Climate Change Act 2008, the UK became the first country to introduce a legally binding target on climate change—an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Transport needs to play a leading role, both to meet this important national target and to address air quality issues in the UK.

In the transport sector, emissions are dominated by those from road vehicles. We have therefore set ourselves the aim of nearly every car and van on our roads being a zero-emissions vehicle by 2050. That will require all new cars and vans on sale to be zero-emissions by around 2040. I understand that this is a bold and ambitious target, which is why we have in place one of the most comprehensive support packages in the world, and at the last spending review we committed over £600 million to help grow the UK market for these vehicles.

[Neil Parish]

I congratulate the Government on the money they are spending in this sector. However, in the particular hot-spots within cities, where there is actually a court case for Britain to reduce its emissions by 2025, there is a need to act much more quickly, particularly in those inner-city areas where we have problems with nitric oxide.

[Mr Goodwill]

Thankfully it is not nitrous oxide, which would be a laughing matter. Nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide are major pollutants. Of course, now that we know more about what is happening in diesel engines after the Volkswagen scandal came to light, the Government are working on that issue. Indeed, I am working with my fellow European Ministers, particularly those in Germany, to address that problem. Sustainable vehicles such as electric and hydrogen cars, which produce no tailpipe emissions, will certainly play a very important part in the transport sector.

It is interesting to note that although the record on car emissions has been disappointing, trucks have been operating pretty much as they should, mainly due to the fact that the monitoring equipment, which previously was too big to get in the boot of a car, is now able to be put on the back of a lorry. So the truck and bus sectors have actually been very good.

Since 2011, more than 70,000 claims have been made for plug-in car and van grants. At least £400 million has been committed to this scheme. With the grant guaranteed until at least March 2018, tens of thousands more motorists will be helped to make the switch to a cleaner vehicle.

Electric vehicle sales are now growing rapidly. Registrations reached a record high in 2015, as 28,188 new electric vehicles arrived on UK roads. More electric vehicles were registered in the UK in 2015 than in the previous four years combined. I am very proud of that progress. Electric vehicles have the potential to unlock innovation and create new advanced industries that spur job growth and enhance economic prosperity.

The low emission vehicle industry already supports more than 18,000 UK jobs and is a key pillar in our ambition for a low-carbon, high-tech, high-skills economy. The UK is already attracting global investment. Nissan’s LEAF, which is built in Sunderland, makes up 20% of electric vehicle sales across Europe. Geely has pledged £300 million to make plug-in hybrid taxis and vans at a new plant under construction in Coventry, creating 1,000 jobs. Ford’s Dunton technical centre in Essex is one of only two global hubs for the development of its electric powertrains.

Support for electric vehicle charging infrastructure has also facilitated the growth of home-grown and ambitious small and medium-sized enterprises. For example, in 2015 Chargemaster, a company that designs and manufactures its products in Milton Keynes, launched its new UltraCharger, which is already being sold in the UK and abroad.

The electric vehicle market is already a success story for the UK, but we need to maintain momentum if we are to meet our ambitious goals. We recognise the need to develop manufacturing and servicing skills to support the growing ultra-low emission vehicle market. The Government have set out an industry-led approach to skills training and apprenticeships. The new Institute for Apprenticeships’ programmes are already emerging, for example at Gateshead College’s skills academy and at Nissan in Sunderland. I understand the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire made: as cars get older and move down the vehicle food chain, so to speak, there will be more call for servicing at local garages. It is important that they have the skills to service the vehicles safely and so ensure that we do not have any nasty accidents.

In terms of air quality, the Office for Low Emission Vehicles’ “Go Ultra Low” city scheme is dedicated to supporting cities across the UK to deliver transformational change. Some £40 million has been awarded to eight cities delivering more infrastructure, including lane access, additional planning requirements and a host of other measures. Those exemplar cities will be key in demonstrating ways of addressing air quality issues. The Government-backed self-regulatory body for the motor industry is committed to maintaining high standards covering new technologies, warranties, car service and repair. The garage finder helps locate businesses committed to the Chartered Trading Standards Institute’s approved code of practice. I hope the progress we made through the block exemption on data for the servicing of conventional vehicles will also help people access the data they need to service these new kinds of vehicles.

Thanks to Government leadership and growing private sector and local authority engagement, the UK now has more than 11,000 public charge points, including more than 850 rapid charge points. That is the largest network in Europe. There are also more than 60,000 domestic charge points. The latest statistics suggest that the average distance to the nearest charge point is just over 4 miles in Great Britain, although I admit that my constituency is a little bit of a charge point desert, and I hope that will be addressed. There are a number of such locations; the constituency of the Secretary of State for Transport is another that does not have a large number of charge points, and we need to address that in parallel with the tourist industry.

[James Heappey]

In advance of the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s hearing about electric cars last week, I did some work to look at the roll-out of petrol pumps for petrol engines a century ago. It was clear that the car came first and the petrol network thereafter. Incentivising the uptake of electric cars must surely be the priority, rather than incentivising the roll-out of charging points. Will the Minister comment on how the Department for Transport and the Treasury intend to compensate for the loss of petrol pump tax revenues as a result of an increased uptake of electric cars?

[Mr Goodwill]

I suspect that that question should be put to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but falling duty levels from petrol and diesel because we have embraced this new technology would be a very good problem to have. Dare I say it, but I am sure the Chancellor or future Chancellors will come up with other, more devious ways of collecting tax from everyday people. As someone who owns a car constructed in 1900, I am well aware of the problems—particularly in the UK, as we were so slow to embrace the gasoline engine car—that people had refuelling their cars. They are not unlike the problems that people are having in charging their electric vehicles.

The electric vehicle only really makes sense on a slow overnight charge, when we have surplus electricity in the grid. Although fast charging is there to address issues of range, there is not really a prospect of thousands and thousands of cars up and down the country fast-charging at service stations. Electric cars make sense in terms of overnight charging at home.

A point was made earlier about sustainable electricity. We talk about zero tailpipe emissions, but that electricity has to be generated somewhere. Germany has sustainable delivery, but given its decision to abandon its nuclear programme and rely more on fossil fuels, the way that hydrogen and electricity are generated is a problem when it comes to better electric and hydrogen vehicles. Norway, with its large amounts of hydroelectricity, is well able to take that up.

Another point raised in an intervention was about electric cars as a means of storage. I was recently at a conference in Germany, where that issue was raised with Tesla. One of the issues is the number of cycles that a car’s battery may have to undergo if it is used as a means of storing electricity to be released into the grid. Some of the manufacturers are concerned that the battery life of their vehicles—it is very good, and better than many expected—could be compromised by large numbers of charge cycles being used in that way. An alternative is that when cars are scrapped the old batteries could be put into banks and used for emergency power supplies in hospitals or to augment the grid.

[David Mowat]

I was listening carefully to what the Minister said about the potential for increased carbon emissions due to this technology, notwithstanding the storage point, which I accept. He said that there were 28,000 electric cars in the UK. Does his Department make any attempt to measure the incremental increase in carbon emissions that that has caused, given our current generating profile and our likely profile in the short term? Is that number measured at all? I know that is an issue for the Energy and Climate Change Committee.

[Mr Goodwill]

The calculation certainly needs to be done as we roll out these vehicles. I expect that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is making those predictions. It depends, as my hon. Friend said, not only on the proportion of sustainable vehicles in the fleet, but on how that electricity is generated, particularly off-peak and overnight. Nuclear energy—the Government are determined to press forward in building a new fleet of stations—is ideally suited to overnight charging using off-peak electricity.

Throughout this Parliament, charging infrastructure will also be delivered through dedicated schemes for cleaner buses and taxis. As part of the £40-million “Go Ultra Low” city scheme, millions of pounds of funding will contribute to infrastructure deployment across eight cities in the UK. Those projects are focused on the most advanced technology for fast, reliable, smart and easily accessible charging for every driver. Highways England, which the Government have more control over than cities, has £15 million of funding to ensure that there is a charge point every 20 miles across 95% of the strategic road network, with rapid charging where possible.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles also have an important role in decarbonising road transport. I heard what my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire had to say about driving the BMW vehicle. I drove the Honda vehicle, and it was no different from driving any other car, which is probably a problem solved. It was a pleasure, and I did not know that it did not have a normal engine under the bonnet. We are supporting infrastructure provision in line with the current state of market development. The Government provided £5 million of funding to help develop 12 publicly accessible hydrogen refuelling stations to support the roll-out of hydrogen vehicles. All 12 are being commissioned during the course of this year and will provide a significant first step towards an initial hydrogen refuelling network.

Just last month, a refuelling station in Teddington in London was officially opened by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones). The network of stations will support vehicle manufacturers that are introducing their first models of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Indeed, our support for hydrogen for transport has helped secure the UK’s status as one of only a handful of global launch markets for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

There is much more that I could have said about our ambitions to press forward with this new technology. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate on an important subject. I underline the Government’s commitment to ensuring that these sustainable new technologies are rolled out in the UK.

Question put and agreed to.