Government projections that there will be two million electric cars on the road by 2020 are understated, says Tim Payne, chief executive of new fast-charging company InstaVolt. In a New Power interview Payne says there is a ‘perfect storm’ of changes that could see an electric vehicles boom.
Among those are the cost to fleets of ‘clean-air zones’ – and the need to replace diesel vehicles. Payne says of the crackdown on clean-air zones, where fleet operators could be charged to enter the zone “That gives them a commercial reason as well as an environmental one,” to switch to electric.
The InstaVolt chief executive says fast-charging points – which the company plans to install at a range of roadside sites, as well as existing petrol stations – will change the fuel without changing customer behaviour, allowing for fast take-up. And as for anxiety over the range and performance of vehicles, Payne says, “virtually every motor manufacturer is already putting EVs into their range or is developing them” and he expects to see them develop as fast as diesel cars did over the previous two decades.
But Payne thinks plans to use batteries in electric vehicles as grid storage are unlikely to come to pass.
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