Nick Clegg announces £9.3m funding for LEV charge points
Deputy Prime Minister announces latest round of funding available to councils and public sector bodies under grant scheme
The government has announced the recipients of around £9 million of funding that will be made available to organisations to increase the UK’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
The total £9.3 million investment is the second phase of the government’s ‘Plug-in vehicle infrastructure grant’ scheme, worth a total of £37 million, which was originally announced in February 2013.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced the second round of funding for low emission vehicle charge points
Announced yesterday (January 30), the funding will be used to create hundreds of publicly accessible charging points at locations across the country, as well as 140 rapid chargepoints which can charge an electric car in less than half an hour.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick 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 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 in our economy.”
‘Go Ultra Low’
It was also announced yesterday that car manufacturers BMW, Nissan, Renault, Toyota and Vauxhall are supporting a government campaign to increase the uptake of electric or hybrid vehicles across the UK by debunking ‘common myths’ that they claim put drivers off switching to electric vehicles.
The ‘Go Ultra Low’ campaign will seek to encourage more drivers to consider using low emission vehicle technology.
Mike Hawes, chief executive of the society of motor manufacturers and traders, said: “This is a significant development as government and some of the country’s leading automotive brands pool resources to fund a campaign that will raise awareness of the benefits and capabilities of these new technologies.
“The Go Ultra Low campaign will help the public understand how these new cars work and how they could be a perfect fit for their personal, business or fleet needs. Given the importance of running costs and environmental performance to new car buyers, we hope the campaign will encourage more people to consider going ultra low.”