The Government recently announced the Plug-In Car Grant which provides a £5,000 incentive for motorists to buy ultra-low carbon cars. In addition to this a £30m fund has been set up to create Plugged-in Places initially at London, Milton Keynes and the North East, with plans to install 11,000 recharging points over the next three years.

There are three capacity issues that the Government needs to plan carefully.

1.Re-charging – it takes about 15-20 minutes to recharge an electric vehicle to 80% capacity. That’s a lot of time waiting to charge your vehicle if you are out and about, so this means that there will have to be electric car “waiting areas” – the question is where as capacity increases?

2.The cost of building Plugged-in Places – I don’t know how much it costs to build a Plugged-in Place, but if the plan is to create 11,000 recharging points, £30m is a drop in the ocean. £30m divided by 11,000 = £2,727 each, so the cost for building 11,000 is going to be a lot, as I am sure they cost more than that to build.
 
3.Electricity demand – have we got enough electricity capacity to cope with thousands of electric cars on UK roads over the next five years? Electricity generation accounts for around 30% of all UK CO2 emissions so will we actually increase our CO2 emissions by producing vast volumes of electric cars and therefore greater electricity demand?

Author: Robert Wastell, Director at Comparecontracthire.com