West Midlands suffers poor start in electric cars race
Jul 23 2010 by Graeme Brown, Birmingham Post
China’s bold approach and sense of environmental urgency mean it is set to “clean up” in the electric vehicles market long-vaunted as a major hope in creating West Midland jobs.
Unless European, UK and local governments emulate the speedy action to support plugin vehicles taken by China and the US, the UK and the West Midlands risk being left behind, according to a senior boss at the region’s only purpose-built low-carbon vehicle employer.
Chris Thorneycroft-Smith, group development director of Coventry-based electric vanmaker Modec, was speaking at Aston University’s Green Growth conference which also saw an address from BMW board member Ian Robertson.
Mr Thorneycroft-Smith, the former managing director of Iveco UK, said with China looking to ban the internal combustion engine in some city centres, the country had a sense of environmental urgency that the UK did not have. China will clean up and they currently have all the cards – battery manufacturers, electronics assembly and a lack of automotive pedigree,” he said.
“They can get started on the solution rather than get bogged down with internal combustion engine technology.”
He said that most of Modec’s world-leading electric commercial vehicles were sold to countries which have introduced stronger incentives to stimulate their domestic markets.
And he warned this could have a detrimental effect on the UK’s hopes to grow its low-carbon manufacturing base in the West Midlands.
“The UK is getting left behind, many other European countries are more supportive,” he said. “Eighty per cent of our vans are exported but in the long term I’m sure many of those countries will insist on local manufacturers.”
On a European level, the conference saw calls for a standardisation of electric vehicle infrastructure, including common plugs and charging points as well as consistency in how electric vehicles were incentivised to unite the hotch-potch of diverse tax and fiscal motivators in the 27 member states.
But the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of electric vehicles is their lack of volume, meaning their costs were much higher to customers than their conventional counterparts, the conference heard.
Mr Thorneycroft-Smith said the UK needed “persuasive financial incentives and a clear legislative landscape” to ensure the shift.
He said there were already some measures in place – such as exemption from excise duty – but that there was still plenty more that could be done to ensure quicker adoption of greener vehicles in the UK
Local authorities were also singled out as failing to support the local industry, with just one of Modec’s electric commercial vehicles in operation in the West Midlands, at Coventry City Council.
Sandy Taylor, head of climate change and sustainability at Birmingham City Council, said procurement policies in the public sector were partly to blame for this, as there was no disposal market for electric vehicles – a factor in fleet buying.
In terms of the West Midlands’ public transport system, Maria-Pilar Machancoses, regeneration and planning manager at Centro, said the transport authority was looking at ways to integrate electric vehicles.
