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£5,000 incentive to buy electric cars

The Government wants to give grants to consumers to buy electric cars like the G-Wiz

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The Government wants to give grants to consumers to buy electric cars like the G-Wiz

Consumers could receive incentives of between £2,000 and £5,000 to buy an electric car from 2011, the Government announced today.

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon said the initiative — part of the Government’s low-carbon transport plan — would mean an electric car was “a real option for motorists”.

He announced the five-year initiative with Business Secretary Lord Mandelson.

The Department for Transport is beginning discussions with the motor industry and financiers to determine how best to deliver this assistance. To be eligible cars would need to meet modern safety standards and have a range and top speed sufficient to give mass market appeal.

Mr Hoon said today: "Cutting road transport CO2 emissions is a key element to tackling climate change. Less than 0.1 per cent of the UK’s 26 million cars are electric, so there is a huge untapped potential to reduce emissions.

"The scale of incentives we’re announcing today will mean that an electric car is a real option for motorists as well as helping to make the UK a world leader in low-carbon transport."

Lord Mandelson said: "Britain has taken a world lead in setting ambitious targets for carbon reduction. Low-carbon vehicles will play a key role in cutting emissions.

"Government must act now to ensure that the business benefits of this ambition are realised here in the UK. We want the British motor industry to be a leader in the low-carbon future, and Government must direct and support this, through what I call new industrial activism."

The five-year plan involves a £250m scheme to deliver a green motoring transformation and involves promoting the infrastructure and support technology and encouragement of manufacture in the UK that will place low-carbon transport at the centre of the Government’s vision for the UK economy.

The two ministers were planning to drive a new Mini E electric vehicle in Dunfermline in Scotland to demonstrate the technology of low-carbon motoring.

At present the cost of electric cars is high, with one high-performance vehicle, the Tesla Roadster, having a starting price of more than £87,000.

At the moment there is also little infrastructure in place to support the recharging that such cars need.

Last week London Mayor Boris Johnson announced a plan to introduce thousands of charging points across the capital.

This article is from The Belfast Telegraph

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Comments

Errr
[info]sara_sense wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 11:50 am (UTC)
How abouut subsidising the equpiment needed to create your own electricity? Oh yeah, I forgot, you threw that one out of parliament.

2011?? We could all be dead by then. Good one.
Re: Errr
[info]therealsharpe wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 05:10 pm (UTC)
It would be nice to make our own power, somehow I think there's too much money to be made from this happening.

But there's a glimmer of hope in technology like RepRap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RepRap

If we could free ourselves from planned obsolecence maybe some bright spark might make a retrofit engine that could be used in exsisting vehicles thereby negating the 'need' for new cars to solve the problem.

I for one wouldn't mind simply replacing "consumable components" in many products rather than buying new ones. I'm sure lots of people feel the same.
carbon free
[info]tlr_tom wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 12:26 pm (UTC)
just how will all the electric needed for these cars be generated?
Wind power? More likely the new generation coal fired power plants.
This really wasn't thought through that well was it...
Decent public transport
[info]2barrows wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 12:47 pm (UTC)
Could we please do something to provide decent bus and rail services run by organisations which do not rip-off their customers and which properly integrate timetabling? Why is everyone preoccupied with moving around in their own world in inefficient little boxes-on-wheels?
Re: Decent public transport
[info]ancientoneuk wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 03:57 pm (UTC)
Amen to that one, I think investing the money into improving and building NEW rail track and reopening closed lines is a much more viable option than encouraging more cars regardless of motive power on our roads.

In the old days, Britain was serviced by regional and local hubs linked by rail, vans and lorries only drove to those and long distance road haulage was a rarity, didn't Blair say he was going to go back to that system in his first term?

Britain needs cheap and affordable mass transit systems, by careful regulation this government can bring this about, a freight train can take eight or more lorries off the road easily and the hauliers don't lose their jobs but change their role in moving goods to and from the freight depots and factories... thus removing congestion from our motorways, reducing pollution and allowing communities to grow again, reducing our thirst for oil too.

A thought occurs too that whilst electric long distance trucks are unviable, they are more viable in the local sense...
A Sinclair C5 moment
[info]wildbillhiccup wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 12:50 pm (UTC)
Theres nothing green about buying a car that will only have a residual curiosity value five years after you've bought it. The metals for the batteries are intensive to mine and process and the electricity to power them is still comming from fossil fuel too.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology will make the current (no pun intended) crop of limited range, long recharge time leccy motors of the type used in the much vaunted tessla roadster an object of ridicule.
Re: A Sinclair C5 moment
[info]sashaluxembourg wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 02:40 pm (UTC)
Hydrogen fuel cell technology is an object of ridicule. It was pushed by Bush and his oil boys as being the answer, "but you'll have to wait, don't worry the scientists have it covered, carry on as normal for now." Truth is it's very inefficient and the hydrogen will have to come from gas. We'll all be driving electric cars before you know it and the "current crop" is about to be blown away by the new breed. Watch BYD, Warren Buffet just put in $240 million for a 10% stake and he didn't get to be one of the richest men in the world by investing in dead end businesses. The truth will set you free, but first, it will p1$$ you off.
Re: A Sinclair C5 moment
[info]unlikelylad wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 02:51 pm (UTC)
No idea about hydrogen fuel cells but the fact that Buffet is investing $240 mio is probably more to do with hedging his exposure to traditional car makers rather than a great vote of confidence in the new technology. He got to where he is by making mistakes as well as calling it right. If he was a 100% convinced my guess would be he would stake more than $240 mio - I think he recognises that the company was under priced given the Government investment in this type of "green" technology and that his exposure to the petro production side needed some balance. If we buy petrol cars he wins, if we buy electric he looses but his $240 mio investment goes to $1 billion and some of his losses are offset.
Make public transport better and cheaper
[info]unlikelylad wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 02:01 pm (UTC)
Unless these cars have style, can attract the young and can go faster than a Fiat Panda with the wind behind it - it will be another design failure.

I think all those in the public sector employees should be forced to buy at least one. Their children should be made to have one as a first car, in flurescent green or bright yellow. How cool - I am the son of a teacher look at me in my bright yellow box.. woosh!

It would certainly kill the cult of the tin box. You can imagine all those great film car chances being replaced by an electric buzz-mobile humming through the mean streets of "souff Lundin". The "Fast and the Furious" would be replaced with the "The Sound of Sewing Machine!" High speed police chases would take place only if the wind turbines were operational.

The whole thing is a farce worthy of a Jules Verne story.

The next big thing in cars should be the ones that get us from A to B with technology gurantees they never crash. Insurance companies would loose a great chunk of free money and the death toll on the road would dissappear. Now that would be worth 5k of you money.

Gee Whizz!
[info]kodak321 wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 02:09 pm (UTC)
I'd rather have an 'Oldies' electric mobility scooter than a G-Wiz. At least people would know your taking the piss. Saw a businessman in a G-Wiz yesterday. He looked so bloody embarrassed, a, what have I done?, I'll never get a bird in this, look. Poor thing.
Why why why why why
[info]mrclaws wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 02:31 pm (UTC)
Good lord, they do talk a load of rubbish don't they? The power has to come from somewhere - and that would be power stations. Pollution source moved but not removed. The range on most models is appalling, on some, to be fair, merely laughable. Can you see all those company cars used by sales reps being replaced by something that only just gets them halfway around the M25 circular? And don't try to pass these battery powered monstrosities off as viable because of the Tesla - it has exactly the same range issues as any other battery car. And then there's the whole business of producing and disposing of the batteries. That is an incredibly messy process involving lots of worldwide transportation that - once again - produces huge amounts of pollution. YES we need an alternative to petrol/diesel because, if nothing else, we're going to run out! But something along the lines of the Honda Clarity is more promising than this garbage.

Oh and by the way, pollution is about more than carbon footprints by the way. Although if you listen to the Government, you'd be forgiven for thinking this unfortunately isn't true.
Tansfield Group PLC - World Leader In Electric Cars
[info]mike4626 wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 02:39 pm (UTC)
buy shares in Tansfield Group PLC and make a fortune !
Sensible alternatives
[info]mbworldproducer wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 03:40 pm (UTC)
So, Geoff, (may I call you Geoff?) no thought on my proposals for Free-Wheels then?

I know it's not as glamorous and exciting as giving tax-payers' money to anyone wanting to drive around in an electric pod, but I though you might like the appeal of giving money back to people and at no cost to the tax-payer?

However, if you are happy to burn billions, can I have a few to launch my alternative, it's smarter, sexier and doesn't need the invention of a whole new power supply system, comes with a full guaranteed refund to all invested funds, oh, and it's far more eco-friendly than pods.

Oh, sorry, I forgot, we're in the world of the pod people now aren't we.

Never mind, Geoff, just be of good cheer and ignore all the jeering, ridicule and threats to your job from all your colleagues.

Better luck next time.


Affordable and here now: electric cars
[info]egeurtsen wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 04:23 pm (UTC)
MyCar from evstores, Mega City from NICE and G-Wiz from GoinGreen are for sale in London now. They save a lot of CO2 and pollution and save their owners a lot of money (no road tax, free parking, no C-Charge and no fuel costs). Happy and clean motoring already here without the need for new infrastrucutre, new batteries technology or subsidies from the UK government. Just a pitty Geoff Hoon thinks these innovators don't deserve any help and instead subsidises the very companies that have been holding back on clean cars for years and are given yet another 2 years to delay the inevitable. What a shame
Sustainability?
[info]therealsharpe wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 04:56 pm (UTC)
Yes quite, you should all go and buy new cars because they will polute less...

What about the energy used in the production of these new vehicles?

And as many have pointed out where is the power going to come from?

And as for Boris saying he will introduce "thousands" of charging points across the capital, that sounds like a stoke of genius for a city with no congestion problems...

Mine's a bike and an old Toyota Hi-lux...
Do we get the rebate in tax? Cash
[info]famulla wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 05:24 pm (UTC)
£5,000 incentive to buy electric cars
Do we get the rebate in tax? Cash
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
and lets not forget..
[info]tommytcg wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 05:53 pm (UTC)
that quite possiby fossil fuels will be used to generate the electricity to charge the batteries that power these vehicles. WHY not a word about hydrogen? Is it that the BP/Shell lobby would not permit its mention? Lets talk hydrogen. Garrett in USA in 1935(!) patented in-car-produced-hydrogen by electrolysis to fully power the vehicle. A Swiss scientist had 200 trucks and tractors up and running on hydrogen in the 70s, using a radio wave to split water vaour. This scientific fact was recently repeated by a US inventor on CNN, CNBC etc Maybe Mr Geoff H would enlighten me as to why, in an age when color digital images are streamed back from the planet Mars, that our brilliant scientists cannot efficiently split a water molecule.
Passing of the buck
[info]b_bobby_b wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 06:05 pm (UTC)
So we're not actually doing something about the problem, just shifting it somewhere else. Electric cars are not the technology of the future. They themselves may be carbon neutral, but the energy that is needed to power them isn't.

In the city they may work, with people making shorter journeys, but they are impractical for long journeys, and recharge times are very slow.

Hydrogen power is the future. We're not there yet, but all signs are promising. This is a misguided step in the wrong direction.
Pie in the Sky.
[info]rojaws wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 06:34 pm (UTC)
Oh yeah, so good old Boris is going to introduce thousands of points across the capital.
Bravo!
What about the rest of the country?
There is more to Britain than just London, surprising though that may seem.
Anyway, this is just more pointless, going through the motions rhetoric.
I'm not getting excited about it.
Energy for electric cars
[info]mpdmyers wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 06:40 pm (UTC)
Drax power station produces around 24 Terawatt-hours (TWh) (86.4 petajoules) of electricity annually. = 24,000,000,000 KWhr

G- wiz 9.66 KWhr full charge
1 charge each day for 1 year = 3525.9 KWhr

Drax could charge 6,806,772 G- wiz every year
26 million G-wiz = 3.8 drax power stations

fallen leaders
[info]leoardo wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 06:41 pm (UTC)
The country must be skint with brown promising gifts to voters 3 years in the future, but its tax raising but not as we know it dim. logic tells us batteries were th esize of footballs and lasted about an hour without a charge, today because it sell the same batteries are the size of a playing card and last 48 hours, when the, cars did 30 miles to the gallon in the early seventies, today because of the control of oil cars stillonly do 30 to the gallon, when the time si right ie the oil runs out cars will do 500 miles on a single charge but vested interest will say 100 miles for every charge, as with the light bulb and car tyres, long life is not good for business.
false hope
[info]someofusknow wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 08:28 pm (UTC)
It's just another example of the false hope that politicans love to churn out, in order to keep the masses confused and deluded at the end of the industrial age. Telling peolle what they want to hear -that there is a solution to energy quandering and environmental collapse. In pracatice we are past Peak Oil, past Peak Coal, and past Peak Imaginary Money and there is only one way form here..... and it's not up.

There is no such thing as a 'green car' any more than there is such a thing as 'clean coal'. Industrial society is predicated on using energy at a hundred times the rate it is available through natural systems and is doomed to failure in the long run. Indeed, ten years from now most people will be broke and will probably be starving. But you'll never get a politician to admit such realities.
Is it a joke?
[info]joseph100 wrote:
Thursday, 16 April 2009 at 11:12 pm (UTC)
Dear readers,
how much money should be offered to petrol stations, ralway stations, car parks, etc. for switching lights off in daytime even at sunshine.
Much much more energy is wasted, so CO2 is emitted, in this country than could be saved by those electric cars.
When and if the rest of the world ran similar lifestyle like people in the UK and USA the world had alredy been died out long time ago.
Initially a good idea, but....
[info]taxan975 wrote:
Friday, 17 April 2009 at 06:52 am (UTC)
...it also means building more power stations. And this means nuclear power stations. Half of Europe has shut down their nuclear power stations due to well-founded fears - and the UK is going to build new ones. With EON at the helm. I'm just too speechless - I can't find any more words to vent my anger.
Public to decide direction of electric motoring
[info]lawrence18uk wrote:
Friday, 17 April 2009 at 10:51 am (UTC)
Quote: "To be eligible cars would need to meet modern safety standards and have a range and top speed sufficient to give mass market appeal."

That is absolutely not for government to decide, "mass market appeal". It may be that low-speed, low-range, low-cost is what people will decide they want. After all, they'd save oodles on their insurance bills. And such cars wouldn't be desirable from a theft point of view.

The subsidy should be given for low energy consumption, without any further strings attached. Government's hand will only ensure more of exactly the same.
Vans
[info]global_changes wrote:
Monday, 8 June 2009 at 04:22 pm (UTC)
If they brought out some electric vans they I might be interested

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