Electric cars will be as popular as the internet

ELECTRIC cars are on track to become as ubiquitous as the internet, the transport minister has said, claiming plug-in vehicle technology was reaching a “tipping point”.

Andrew Jones, the roads minister, said sales of ultralow emissions vehicles (ULEVs) were “rocketing”, with 28,188 new ULEV cars on the road in 2015 – almost double the number in 2014, and more than the previous five years combined.

Although this remains a tiny fraction of the overall car market – 2.6 million new vehicles were sold last year – the Government believes by 2050 it can get “virtually every car and van on the road to be zero emission”.

In a speech this week, Mr Jones said: “The shift we are seeing reminds me of the spread of the internet in the Nineties. The internet started small, as a niche interest, but then it snowballed, and now it’s hard to imagine being without it.

“I think we are seeing a similar picture emerging for ultra-low emission vehicles in Britain today.”

In 1998, just 9 per cent of households had home access to the internet, but by 2004 that had increased to more than half of all homes, ONS data suggest. Some 85 per cent of households now have home internet access, the majority of them with broadband connections.

Mr Jones added: “The internet only really snowballed when internet users, providers, website retailers and investors came together in sufficient numbers to create a tipping point. We’re reaching that tipping point with the ULEV market.”