Electric cars: the expert's view of government transport policy

John Loughhead
The Guardian, Thursday 16 April 2009

Today's strategy makes one thing abundantly clear: government ministers have identified transport as an important part of the drive towards a low-carbon economy and have developed some high aspirations in the role the UK is going to play. Their strategic approach should be applauded in what will be an international shift in the way we travel.
The problem is that the 16-page document doesn't really tell you how they're going to do most of it. There is a distinct lack of detail. Missing is a statement of how the efforts in the UK will be connected to and leverage off plans elsewhere. The UK is a very small part of the world car market. It's very good that they're trying to develop the infrastructure and trying to encourage the UK as a demonstrator site. But if Germany, the US, Japan and China don't do this, nobody else will do it either.
Electric cars in the foreseeable future are never going to be anything more than urban vehicles. One of the issues will be what accompanying measures will persuade people to invest in these things? The strategy talks about some grants but there's something more pragmatic to consider. Do we have our own cars for long journeys and borrow them for urban ones? How do you bring about that change in culture and usage?
Then there is an in-built assumption that the electricity powering the cars will be low carbon. If you generate your electricity by making coal-fired power stations run, you'll exacerbate the climate problem. Another question is around what extra load will be put on the electricity network and will the network and generating capacity be able to respond in a low-carbon fashion?
And will a £5,000 incentive be enough? Electric cars probably have a higher premium than that. So perhaps this incentive could be combined with others - a commitment by a certain date, say, to require all cars entering city centres to be electric.
This strategy outlines the decarbonisation challenge and the top-level political view of the kind of approach we're going to take to tackle it. The next questions are, what exactly are we going to do, and how much will it cost and how will we judge if it's successful?
• John Loughhead is executive director of the UK Energy Research Centre