Calls for EV quotas for car manufacturers

Global Action Plan is calling on the government to enforce a 15 per cent electric vehicle quota for car manufacturers after a national survey revealed that the public want government action and are ready for more affordable cars that do not create emissions.

The new polling carried out by Opinium on behalf of the Global Action Plan charity and the FIA Foundation found that second car owners would make perfect candidates for electric vehicles which could convert 5.7 million exhaust emitting cars to electric.

Currently less than one per cent of the 32 million cars on the road in the UK are fully electric. With the government’s recent consultation on how early to phase out petrol and diesel cars, Global Action Plan, the charity behind Clean Air Day, is calling for car manufacturers to be issued with at least ’15 per cent electric vehicle quotas’ in order to meet the earliest phase out date.

The research claims that 59 per cent of two-car families have off-road parking (for easy charging), never drive the second car more than 50 miles in a day (electric cars last at least 100 miles before charging is required), and have another car for all longer trips. If this same 59 per cent converted to electric, there would be approximately 5.7 million more electric cars on the road.  

In addition to revealing market readiness, the survey also finds that households with second cars want government action and actively oppose the lack of affordable EV options. Of those surveyed with second cars in the UK: 53 per cent agree that car manufacturers make too much money selling petrol and diesel cars; 41 per cent believe car companies put profits ahead of people’s health and well-being; 90 per cent think it should be a priority for the UK’s central and local government to regulate car companies to force them to sell more affordable cars that do not cause emissions; and 69 per cent dislike causing air pollution as they drive and wish for manufacturer-led technology to stop exhaust emissions from all cars.

Chris Large, co-CEO of Global Action Plan, said: “The car industry often cites the long family holiday and availability of public charge points as a major reason that drivers won’t go electric. But the facts are that for one in six cars on the road – the ‘second’ car in 5.7 million households – these are not problems and electric cars are the perfect vehicle. If the car industry had spent the last decade producing Nissan Leaf-type cars, instead of spending billions on marketing SUVs, we would be doing far better than the current level of one in 99 cars on the road being fully electric. The government must not allow this corporate failure to persist and must regulate the market. The car companies that made $600 billion profit from selling diesel and petrol cars in the last decade, must be made to focus on mass producing zero emission vehicles in this decade.”