UK government unprepared for EV rush

Nearly seven million drivers in Britain are contemplating the purchase of an electric car within the next five years. The problem is, there won't be mass-market electric cars available in Britain within that timeframe, says the RAC Foundation, the body that commissioned the survey that revealed this statistic.

Publication of the survey results provided the RAC Foundation with a springboard to criticise the UK government for offering prospective buyers a £5000 incentive to go green with an electric vehicle.

According to the Foundation, the British government doesn't expect electric vehicles to be widely available in the mass market until 2017 at the earliest, yet the Department for Transport has declared that the £5000 incentive scheme will apply from as early as 2011. In the shorter term, the electricity generation infrastructure in the UK continues to be based around the combustion of fossil fuels, so electric cars merely shift the pollution problem from one part of the country to another.

"What the Government is in danger of doing is putting the cart before the horse," says Professor Stephen Glaister of the RAC Foundation.

"It is actively promoting the purchase of electric vehicles long before there is any chance of manufacturers making them widely available."

"It has gone out of its way to encourage people to make green choices, yet these choices are not yet realistic."

"Even by the Government's own analysis, this form of environmentally-friendly transport will not be on the mass market for another eight years -- and even that assumes a major breakthrough in battery technology in the meantime."

"Ministers' thinking on green technology is all over the place. They talk of incentives of up to £5000 for prospective buyers of electric cars from 2011. Yet at that stage there will be almost nothing in the showroom for people to purchase."

"What's more, the same announcement talked of a mere £20 million being spent on a national charging infrastructure, but only last week the Mayor of London acknowledged that at least £60 million would be needed to provide such a network in the capital alone."

"And all this comes even before you ask how the electricity to power these phantom vehicles will be produced -- for the next decade (before new nuclear power stations are built for example) the answer will almost certainly be by burning fossil fuels."

"The RAC Foundation fully supports the introduction of green vehicles. But electric cars are not the short-term solution. What the Government should be doing is improving the road network and encouraging manufacturers to refine existing technology. That means increasing road capacity to cut congestion and CO2 emissions; focussing on producing leaner petrol and diesel engines; and making smaller and lighter cars."

The British experience, based on the survey, is a sign of things to come in the Australia market too. With Mitsubishi seemingly committed to introducing the I-MiEV locally and Holden planning to bring the Volt here -- never mind plans by other companies to market electric vehicles in Australia -- these challenges will not be unique to Britain by any means.

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