“Range anxiety? Why does it have to be range anxiety?” Just like it was for Indiana Jones and snakes, with prospective owners of electric cars the issue is always range anxiety. Worrying about whether you’re going to make it to Pontefract without stopping to recharge. But as someone who has recently rediscovered trains, I have a suggestion. If manufacturers concentrated on marketing their cars as urban vehicles, the issue of how much juice you need for a four-hour journey north might start receding.
I have been pontificating about buying an electric car for five years now, and have test-driven everything from Teslas to Jaguars, from BMWs to Volvos. Last year I even had an electric charging point installed in my house. So, I’m keen. Like most people who have yet to make the switch, my big fear is range. Even though the AA enthusiastically claims it will soon become a “thing of the past”, range remains the salient issue. However, if you’re a Londoner who hasn’t much cause to venture outside the city, then going electric increasingly looks like the smart thing to do.
Over Christmas I spent a couple of weeks driving a Polestar, and I enjoyed the experience so much I’m actually thinking of buying one. And when I say experience, I mean precisely that. I spent a week zig-zagging and pinballing all over town, from Paddington to Vauxhall, from Notting Hill to Wembley and all points in between, and I loved the whole point-and-shoot aspect of the drive. You get in, turn it on and then scoot around town as though you’re driving an amped-up golf trolley. Like a big toy. It was the first time I’d properly used an electric car as a purely urban vehicle, and there was nothing about it I didn’t like. There is still something incredibly novel about the ride. With the Polestar I felt a lot like I did when I first learned to drive, when I couldn’t wait to get into my car. I’d use any excuse. Delivering a boring relative back to their north London house (“I don’t mind taking you!”), being the designated driver on an evening of revelry (“Seriously, I don’t mind driving!”), even going to the tip (“I can take your rubbish at the same time!”).
Driving a Polestar, I scooted around town as if I was driving an amped-up golf trolley. A big toy
However — and there is always a however with electric vehicles — the state is letting us down. The only place most Londoners will see free parking is on a Monopoly board. Sure, if you’re an electric vehicle driver, you get a 100 per cent discount on the congestion charge, exemption from the Ulez charge, up to 100 per cent off road tax, plus plug-in grants for new vehicles. But there is no cross-borough consensus on parking. Surely one of the most effective ways of convincing people to switch would be to offer free parking anywhere in London, but of the 32 city boroughs, only 11 have moved with the times: Barking & Dagenham, Hammersmith & Fulham, Haringay, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Newham, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames and Westminster. There should be legislation forcing councils to comply with blanket free parking as well as a city-wide roll-out of charging points. Until then, we’ll be caught in a twilight zone of indecision, one administered by both central and local government as well as a private sector which is always on the lookout for a handy state handout.
Surely some of the vast acreage given over to cycle lanes could be easily repurposed. If just five per cent of Old Oak Common (the gargantuan postcode in Acton where they’re building the HS2 hub) was offered up, we could build enough chargers to cater for every single electric car in the country, in perpetuity.
The industry is in rude health. Nissan has announced it’s going to build three new electric models in Sunderland; Tata is building a multi-billion-pound factory outside Bridgwater; and BMW is investing in the production of its new electric Minis in Oxford. Even though the phasing-out of the internal combustion engine has been delayed, sales of new electric cars are creeping up. But concentrating on cities, and London in particular, would be a way to attract potential switchers as well as making our fair city even more future-facing. Which would make the future rosier for all of us.
