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Nick Clegg has backed an electric car campaign to encourage more people to take up the technology.
The deputy prime minister threw his weight behind the Go Ultra Low campaign, which aims to challenge common fears about electric cars, such as that they are expensive and cannot go far without recharging.
The campaign, backed by BMW, Nissan, Renault, Toyota and Vauxhall, highlights that electric car owners are exempt from car tax and congestion charges, while running costs can be as low as 2p a mile. A family that drives 10,000 miles a year could save £1,000 on fuel, it says.
Government is spending £9 million on hundreds of charging points across the country, which it claimed gave the UK one of the best such networks in Europe.
Clegg said: “Electric cars are one of the most promising of our green industries and we want to secure the UK’s position as a global leader in both the production and adoption of these vehicles.
“The extremely low running costs of electric cars help drivers save money and we are allocating more than £9 million to boost chargepoints across the country to help drivers to go green.
“This means we can lower UK emissions and create high-tech engineering and manufacturing jobs to boost our economy.”
Electric vehicles pose a challenge to the electricity networks, as they create new sources of demand and there is uncertainty over how fast they will be rolled out. In their business plans for 2015-23, the distribution network operators have planned for a relatively slow take-up of electric vehicles.
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