Tag: Transportation

Theresa May Promises £106m Investment In Green Vehicles Including Electric Cars

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 (ZEV) 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.

Special ‘Green Plates’ Plan For Ultra Low-Emission Vehicles

Drivers of ultra-low emission vehicles could be given new green number plates as a “badge of honour” which could give them special privileges.

Plans under consideration by ministers would see cars, vans and taxis which conform to high environmental standards given the special registration plates, along the line of schemes in Norway, Canada and China.

Green number plates could help support local incentives for electric cars by allowing access to special bus or low emission vehicle lanes, charging bays or ultra-low-emission zones.

Plans for a forthcoming consultation were announced on Sunday and could pave the way for the plates to be installed on UK vehicles in the next few years.

It will consider potential designs for the eye-catching plates, which could include being entirely green on the front, back or both sides of the vehicle, or a green symbol.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said: “The UK has a proud history of leading the world in technological advances and that is no different for ultra-low emission vehicles, where we are at the forefront of innovation and testing.

“This new cleaner, greener transport has the potential to bring with it cleaner air, a better environment and stronger economies for countries around the world.

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the special plates could be a ‘badge of honour’ for green motorists 

“Adding a green badge of honour to these new clean vehicles is a brilliant way of helping increase awareness of their growing popularity in the UK and might just encourage people to think about how one could fit into their own travel routine.”

The announcement comes as the UK prepares to host the world’s first zero emission vehicle summit.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “Far from standing out from the crowd, increasingly the new electric cars coming to market are indistinguishable from their everyday petrol or diesel-powered equivalents; a green number plate could become a badge of honour for motorists and businesses wanting to signal their environmental credentials.

“Potential EV owners might welcome this as a subtle way of showing that they are joining a small but fast-growing club – there are now at least 168,000 cars on the road that have been bought with the government’s plug-in grant scheme and numbers are rising steadily.”

The behavioural insights team – originally set up as Whitehall’s “nudge unit” to promote changing the way people acted – said the plan could help “normalise” electric vehicle use.

Elisabeth Costa, director at the behavioural insights team, said: “We support efforts to increase awareness of the numbers of clean vehicles on our roads. Simple changes based on behavioural science can have a big impact.

“Green plates would be more noticeable to road users and this increased attraction can help normalise the idea of clean vehicles, highlighting the changing social norms around vehicle ownership.”

Uber To Start Focusing More On Electric Bicycles And Scooters

Uber is a brand that’s synonymous with taxis, and yet the company could soon be shifting away from the vehicle that has helped make its millions and instead be offering you an electric scooter or bicycle.Speaking to the Financial Times, Uber&rsqu…

Electric Cars Could Soon Be Charged In Seconds With New ‘Flow Battery’

A revolutionary new battery technology could allow electric cars to be fully charged in seconds, instead of the hours it currently takes.

Developed by chemists at the University of Glasgow, the ‘flow battery’ contains a liquid filled with nano molecules that can release energy as either electrical power or hydrogen.

As opposed to its solid form, the liquid nano molecules have two clear benefits for electric cars. The first is that it can store up to ’10 times’ the energy as its solid counterpart. The second is that it could in theory allow electric cars to be charged in seconds.

For example when a car needs to be charged the liquid can simply be pumped out of the vehicle and exchanged for charged liquid in much the same way that you would fill up a car with fuel.

The old battery fluid would then be charged and made ready to be used in another car.

Professor Leroy (Lee) Cronin, the University of Glasgow’s Regius Chair of Chemistry lead the team who made the discovery.

“Our approach will provide a new route to do this electrochemically and could even have application in electric cars where batteries can still take hours to recharge and have limited capacity,” explained Professor Cronin.

While it is becoming quicker and easier to charge an electric car the simple truth is that it can still take several hours to fully recharge a vehicle with a range of only a few hundred miles.

The introduction of new ultra-fast charging stations around the country in the future will help to alleviate this but the team at Glasgow believe that their liquid battery solution could solve the problem permanently.

In addition, because it’s a hybrid system the liquid can be used for both electric cars and hydrogen cars which turn the substance back into electricity.