The transport secretary has promised to make it “easier and cheaper” to buy electric cars, as the government announces £63m worth of funding to help build charging infrastructure.
Heidi Alexander said on Sunday she wanted to make it more affordable to switch to electric vehicles as she announced new money for councils and other bodies to spend on facilities to charge cars.
She announced £63m worth of funding for EV charging, with officials also finalising plans for a £700m package of subsidies to bring down the cost of buying a new electric car.
The money still falls short of the £950m pledged by the Conservatives for motorway charging points, however, which the Labour government scrapped last month, accusing the previous government of having failed to set aside funding for it.
UK-made EVs are expected to receive the most generous subsidies under the scheme, which would probably benefit the Japanese carmaker Nissan, which is gearing up to produce a new version of its Leaf electric car in Sunderland.
Support is expected to be targeted at the buyers of more affordable cars, meaning that premium and luxury vehicles such as those made by the US manufacturer Tesla and the new UK-made electric Range Rover and other Land Rover models soon to be launched by JLR may not be eligible.
Alexander said on Sunday: “We do need to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy an electric vehicle. So today we’re announcing really big investment, £63m in charging infrastructure across the country – £25m for councils.”
She said some of the money would be spent on new charging points, but the money for local authorities was to enable them to dig gullies under paving slabs to allow car owners to run charging cables across residential streets. An additional £30m would go to vehicle depots such as those used by the NHS.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, pledged £400m for charging infrastructure over the next five years at last month’s spending review – part of a £1.4bn fund to support the uptake of all EVs.
Just over 20% of new cars sold this year were electric, according to the data company Zap Map. But while the number of electric car sales increased by about 240% from 2021 to 2024, they still account for less than 5% of all the cars on British roads.
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Ministers have set a target that electric cars should account of 28% of all new sales this year, though have introduced “flexibilities” into those rules that bring the real target down to about 22%, according to the thinktank New Automotive.
The Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced the first purchase subsidies for EVs in 2011, when sales and the number of models on offer were tiny. However, the Conservatives ended the subsidies in 2022 amid concerns that the policy was expensive and mainly benefited wealthier households, in a move that was heavily criticised by carmakers.
The government is also seeking to boost domestic manufacturing of zero-emission vehicles, and separately announced on Sunday it would invest £2bn over the next five years on a range of technologies to help the industry.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, said: “We’re helping British carmakers get to the front of the pack by working hand in hand with investors to build a globally competitive electric vehicle supply chain in the UK.”