Only 44 per cent of Britain’s busiest park’n’ride and commuter car parks have any equipment installed to charge electric vehicles, a new survey claims.
Of the 12,000 sample parking spaces in parks visited by paid researchers, less than 1% had a charging cable installed.
The research was commissioned by 15 month old start-up Net Zero Choices. Co-founders Thom Groot and Tom Eilon launched their Electric Car Scheme to promote the government’s “salary sacrifice” benefit for employees, after they had found the government’s tax incentive for workers to switch to electric driving impossible to access.
The pair claim their scheme lowers employees’ costs of accessing low pollution jalopies by as much as 60%, compared to standard leasing packages for pay-rolled staff.
Department of Transport statistics published last month on EV chargers now deployed point to just under 35,000 public charging points across the UK, a rise of 8% on the quarter to July. Half of that total, the ministry reckons, are ‘destination’ public chargers including in car parks. 32% are on-street, including in converted lampposts.
Net Zero Choices commissioned research to find out how evenly those ‘destination’ chargers are distributed, meeting the convenience of frequent EV drivers.
In Scotland, 60% of what the study calls “commuter” car parks offer EV chargers, beating 44% in England and 25% in Wales.
With only 1% of cars on Britain’s roads now fully electric, and ICE cars still outselling electric ones five to one, according to latest DVLA statistics, the company says far more needs to be done to encourage motorists make the switch to electric.
The Electric Car Scheme’s backers quote official statistics that all road transport – including trucks – accounted for 27% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, more than any other sector.
Commuting is a huge part of that total, the venture claims, with government figures stating the average car being driven 1800 miles last year to and from work.
Electric Car Scheme’s CEO Thom Groot commented: “Our infrastructure needs to move faster in order to meet the UK’s Net Zero goals. It’s worrying that only one percent of public car spaces in commuter belts offer charging points, when currently 16 per cent of new cars sold are electric.”
