The Government has been accused by MPs of not doing enough to encourage fleets to invest in plug-in vehicles.

The influential Transport Committee believes fleets rather than private buyers will increase the adoption of ultra-low emission vehicles (ULEVs).

However, it says the Government is putting too much emphasis on “domestic” buyers and is missing a trick by not spending more of its own £400 million fleet budget on plug-in technology.

Louise Ellman, chairman of the Transport Committee, said: “The Government has taken some steps to promote these cars to fleet purchasers, but a glance at the website of the Office of Low Emission Vehicles shows that most of the emphasis has been on promoting cars to domestic purchasers.”

She added that using some of the Government’s fleet budget to buy plug-in vehicles would be “a much more productive way forward” in driving early adoption – a point highlighted in a recent report from the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR). 

The Government has said that by 2015 it should expect to see tens of thousands of plug-in vehicles on UK roads and perhaps hundreds of thousands by 2020, if not sooner.

But Ellman said it would take “a leap of faith to imagine the number of plug-in vehicles will reach tens of thousands in just two years”.

The IPPR report shows that Britain was sixth out of 20 European countries in terms of total registrations of plug-in vehicles, with France leading the way with 8,989 registrations, compared to the UK’s 3,342 units. But, the UK was 15th in terms of registrations of these vehicles expressed as a percentage of all cars registered in 2011 and 2012 at 0.84%, while Norway is ranked first with 22.75%.

Powering Ahead, a report from Ricardo-AEA, suggests that even the more positive assessments foresee only 200,000 plug-in hybrid and pure eletric cars being sold each year in the UK by 2020 – 10% of total registrations. Some experts think sales will actually be as low as 40,000.

Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “The key to making electric cars a commercial success is a major advance in battery technology. Until then these vehicles are likely to remain too expensive and too impractical to penetrate the mass market.” 

As of March 31, 3,633 claims have been made through the Plug-in Car grant scheme, of which three-quarters were by business users, while 264 claims have been made through the Plug-in Van Grant scheme.

Since February 2012, motorists purchasing a qualifying ultra-low emission van can receive a grant of 20% towards the cost of the vehicle, up to a maximum of £8,000.

Cars qualify for a grant of 25% towards the cost, up to a maximum of £5,000.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has set aside £300m to fund the scheme during the lifetime of this Parliament.

Transport minister Norman Baker acknowledged that the Government needed to encourage the market.

He said: “It is important to identify the potential for fleet buyers and we are doing that not least of all through our work with the Energy Saving Trust.”

The Government has allocated £280,000 to help a further 100 fleets understand where ultra-low emission vehicles could work for them.

Twenty fleets have already been through the Plugged-in Fleets Initiative, delivered by the Energy Saving Trust in partnership with EDF Energy and Route Monkey.

However, the extra cash aims to help more fleets explore the potential savings they could make.

Baker insisted that he is “seeing business embracing low carbon cars”.

Two new company car tax rates for ULEVs from April 2015 have also sought to encourage further fleet acquisition after the chancellor was criticised for removing incentives in his 2012 Budget statement.

For more on the EV business case, look out for our Electric Fleet report with the June 13 issue.

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