The UK Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, has made a bold statement of intent by suggesting that all of the UK will have to be driving electric within the next ten years.

Shapps was speaking as the government celebrated the news that there are now half a million plug-in hybrid and pure electric cars in Britain, with the aim to get as many drivers converted to greener driving alternatives by 2030, at which point petrol and diesel sales will be halted.

Figures published this week demonstrated that the trend for EVs is on the rise, with one in eight new cars sold said to be an EV in 2021, compared to one in ten last year. But the government’s drive to zero-emission vehicles may yet be over-ambitious, the commitment is only to ban new ICE vehicles within the decade, while older and existing petrol cars can remain on the roads until 2050.

But that didn’t prevent the Transport Secretary from making what may be a wildly inaccurate statement ahead of the UK hosting the global environmental conference later this year.

“As hosts of COP26 we want to drive decarbonisation on the global stage, which is why we’re going further and faster to make the journeys of our future as clean as possible,” Shapps said
“With news that the half-a-million milestone has now been met, together with the UK now having the second largest EV market in Europe, it’s clear that the shift to green motoring is accelerating at speed.
“[In] Only eight-and-a-half years' time everybody will have to be driving electric.”

Despite the claims from the government, motoring organisations are a little more cautious, explaining that the appetite to go green still has some barriers, particularly the cost of a new EV.

“Even though more models are coming on to the market, our research suggests upfront cost remains a concern to drivers when comparing the cost of an electric vehicle with a similarly sized conventional vehicle,” the RAC’s Nicholas Lyes told the Daily Mail.

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