A £400m fund to develop electric car charging infrastructure was announced in yesterday’s Budget.
In Wednesday’s Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Hammond revealed that a £400m fund would be made available to develop the UK’s electric car charging infrastructure as part of plans to increase the use of electric vehicles.
The increase in infrastructure across the country will hopefully address a ‘barrier’ which has stunted the growth of electric vehicle use. As it stands there are 115,000 electric cars in the UK, with 13,000 charging points across 4,500 locations.
A £100m Plug-In Car Grant was also announced which would be used to subsidise the cost of purchasing an electric or hybrid vehicle, with another £40m set aside for electric charging research.
The government, itself will contribute £200m to the £400m development fund, while the car-buying subsidy will be in place until 2020, contributing up to £4,500 towards the cost of buying an electric car.
On top of this funding, Phillip Hammond also pledged to make changes to the tax system which would result in people who charge their car at work not being taxed.
In addition to growing the electric car industry, the government also support the implementation of driverless cars in the future, Hammond said: “Our future vehicles will be driverless but will be electric first.”
To keep up to date about latest developments in the energy industry, follow Apollo Energy on Twitter.