EVs: government intervention on charging is now urgent

Of all the industries going through massive changes, the car market is perhaps the one seeing the biggest revolution. The government's target is that by 2030, 8% of new cars and 70% of new vans will be EVs.

It was reported in late November 2024 that UK production of electric and hybrid cars had dropped by a third compared to last year. In late November, Vauxhall said it would close its van production plant in Luton, in part because of rules imposed by the government to speed up EV production. Ford also recently said it was cutting 800 jobs over the next three years. One of the reasons they gave was that there was less demand for EVs.

Government needs to do more to incentivise people and businesses to buy Electric Vehicles

if they are going to have any chance of hitting their targets.

The car industry has called for new measures from the Government, including new subsidies for buyers of used electric cars and halving VAT on new models to stimulate demand. However, to be truly effective, these measures need to extend to commercial fleets. The new government’s budget said that the company car tax for EVs will rise to 9% by 2029-30, compared to up to 39% for petrol and diesel vehicles. There will also be £200 million of investment in the UK charging infrastructure in 2025/26 and £120 million set aside to support the purchase of electric vans.  This is all moving in the right direction, but they need to be doing more.

The government could extend the size and scope of grants for businesses to help them install EV chargers. The financial assistance available under the Workplace Charging Scheme and infrastructure grant for staff and fleets is capped at £350 per socket, with the average cost of installing a charging point at around £1000. You don’t need a calculator to see there would be huge charges for business here.

The previous government set a target of 300,000 public charge points by 2030. At the current installation rate, this target is unlikely to be met. As of July 2024, according to lobby group ChargeUK, there were 930,000 charging points across the UK. However, the majority of these are in private homes and business premises, with only about 65,000 public chargers available. A commercial rapid-charging site may charge motorists up to 79p per kWh or more, compared to 10p per kWh for domestic charging. More incentives are needed for businesses - a DC charging station for larger vehicles can cost up to £30,000. The Workplace Charging Scheme is capped at 40 charge points while the infrastructure grant is only open to SMEs. Schemes like these are laudable, but they need to be extended much more.

The government also needs to speed up charger connections to the national grid and make it easier for charger installation companies to get permission from local authorities and other bodies to install chargers. The new Labour government has promised to speed up public charger installation but hasn’t provided any details as to how it will do it or if it will stick to the 300,000 targets decided upon by the last government. Another powerful incentive for people to install home charging points would be increasing the payments to consumers who charge using solar power and sell excess energy back into the National Grid.

To convince businesses to choose EV vehicles, the government needs to extend installation grants to all house and flat owners. For staff who are travelling around the country demonstrating products, or those with long commutes, it's essential that they can charge at home as well as at their workplace. Tax breaks should be provided to companies that install a large number of EV sockets.

Based in Salford, evec supplies and installs a wide range of commercial and domestic EV chargers for the public, organisations and businesses

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