When will you be buying an electric car? What is stopping you?

17 March 2021

The deadline is clear. The Government has decided that new petrol and diesel car sales will stop in 2030. While a second hand market will exist for some time the push towards electric is clear.

We have been speaking to our Transport User Community about this. Most people understand the goal and what happens in 2030. However, what they are less clear about is what will happen to get there and when it would be best to switch.

Several key questions emerged from our new insight report on these discussions:

• will public charge points become more common?
• when will the up-front cost of electric vehicles come down?
• the fear of running out of charge remains.

We discussed these and other issues at a recent webinar, Going electric: the drivers’ view. You can watch a recording  here.

Rachel McClean MP, the minister with responsibility for future transport, gave a keynote address and took a number of questions. The great line-up of speakers included the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, Nissan, bp pulse, the Electric Vehicle Association England, Gridserve, Moto services, Highways England and Transport for London.

If you don’t have time to watch the whole hour and a half webinar, take a look at the short interviews we did with road users. People currently driving electric cars really love them!

What next? We will be talking more to Highways England and the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles about re-charging on England’s motorways on and major ‘A’ roads. Among other things, we hope to be able to help benchmark user satisfaction with re-charging on these roads. We also want to be able to pinpoint road users’ priorities for improvement as substantial amounts of government and private money is spent on new facilities.

The future looks electric. We all need to help get there as quickly as possible. The health crisis will hopefully pass. The climate crisis needs more attention.