An environmental charity is urging the UK government to consider a 15 per cent electric vehicle quota to help speed up the move to zero-emission vehicles.

Research by Global Action Plan has revealed that the UK infrastructure is perfectly set up for a fast move to electric vehicles with 59 per cent of two-car families having off-road parking, making it easier for charging, and that many never drive the second car for more than 50 miles. GAP points out that if this 59% converted to EVs then there would be 5.7 million more electric cars on the road.

The GAP research also found that of those surveyed, 90 per cent wanted the government and local authorities to force car manufacturers to sell low-emission vehicles.

Chris Large, Co-CEO, Global Action Plan, said: “The car industry often cites the long family holiday and availability of public charge points as a major reason that drivers won’t go electric.

“But the facts are that for 1 in 6 cars on the road – the ‘second’ car in 5.7m households – these are not problems and electric cars are the perfect vehicle.

“If the car industry had spent the last decade producing Nissan Leaf-type cars, instead of spending billions on marketing SUVs, we would be doing far better than the current level of 1 in 99 cars on the road being fully electric.

“The government must not allow this corporate failure to persist and must regulate the market. The car companies that made $600bn profit from selling diesel and petrol cars in the last decade, must be made to focus on mass-producing zero-emission vehicles in this decade.”

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