Theresa May has announced a £106m in funding for the research and development of green vehicles including electric cars.
The announcement was made at the first Zero Emission Vehicle () Summit held in Birmingham. The prime minister went on to say that the UK should start “leading from the front and working with industries and countries around the world to spearhead change.”
In addition to £106m provided by the government, there will be a further £500m of investment made by industry leaders including the creation of around 1,000 jobs.
“Our electric UK-manufactured cars account for one-in-five sold in Europe,” said the prime minister.
In addition to these financial incentives the prime minister has also unveiled a new international declaration which will create a shared set of targets and objectives on how countries can adopt green vehicles in the future.
There are already 11 countries signed up including Italy, France, Denmark, the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Belarus and Indonesia with more expected to sign up in the coming months.
Despite this investment a recent survey by GoCompare found that for every 10 electric cars in the UK there was just one public charging point.
To combat this already considerable shortfall of public chargers, the government has already announced a £400m investment in the rolling out of a much larger charging network in combination with partners.
There are currently around 133,000 electric cars on the roads in the UK, and yet there are just 13,534 chargers dotted around the UK.
While you certainly wouldn’t expect there to be a like for like figure this does become problematic for electric cars in particular. For starters they take longer to charge and so are required for longer periods of time by one vehicle.
To try and increase the uptake of electric vehicles in the UK the Department of Transport has also said it’s looking into the creation of a green number plate specially for electric or low-emission vehicles.
The green number plates would be used to raise awareness of green vehicles in an effort to encourage customers to choose electric next time they buy a new car.
Of course cost has always traditionally been a barrier with many electric cars costing well above the average for their size and class. Cars like the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe have done much to bring the cost down with both cars costing below £30,000 and £20,000 respectively.