charging infrastructure

A special podcast from Spotlight, the New Statesman’s policy supplement - The New Statesman podcast will return tomorrow.

In 2020, the UK announced the end of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. At the time, Boris Johnson’s government pledged £1.8bn to support greater uptake of zero emission vehicles, including £1.3bn to rollout more chargepoints for electric vehicles nationwide.

Since then, the country has seen the biggest year-on-year growth in electric car registration for years. But there are millions of registered cars on the road in the UK – so how far have we come on the EV journey?

In the second episode of a three-part special partnered series with Wejo, the smart mobility tech company, a panel of expert guests discuss what’s standing in the way of greater uptake of EVs, in the UK and elsewhere. 

Alona Ferber, editor of the New Statesman’s Spotlight policy channel, is joined by Richard Barlow, founder and chief executive of Wejo, Melanie Shufflebotham, founder and COO of the EV charging app, Zap_Map, Dale Vince, CEO of Ecotricity, and Philipe Vangeel, Secretary General of AVERE, the European Association for Electromobility.

The next episode of this special series explores the autonomous vehicles future that is nearly here. Click here for the first episode.

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How soon will you be driving an electric car? The Government laid out its Road to Zero plan this week, adding some detail to previous announcements on how it wants to drum petrol and diesel cars off our streets.

But is there enough in there to show how we will get from electric and hybrid cars currently making up a 2.2 per cent market share to 50 per cent by 2030?

From 2040, new cars running only on petrol and diesel won’t be able to be sold and a decade after that we’re all meant to go electric.

The crucial question though is what happens in the near future. How long before your next car is electric?

Simon Lambert, Lee Boyce and Georgie Frost look at what it will take to tempt us into electric cars, where they will be charged and how long their range needs to be for drivers to take them seriously.

They also look at how much a second-hand electric car might cost you.

Also on this week’s podcast, Lee reveals a savings trick that could get you a 7 per cent return on £1,000 and we ask whether fixing your mortgage for a decade is wise.

BT raising the cost of old email addresses to an astonishing £7.50 a month is also on the agenda.

And finally, football isn’t coming home (yet) but has England’s good run at the World Cup boosted the economy?

Enjoy.