EV backers fuming over higher tariffs

Increasing tariffs for rapidly charging electric vehicles could encourage drivers to opt for petrol or diesel cars instead – and impede climate change targets, it has been argued.

Last week, Highland councillors considered a recommendation to almost triple the cost of using its rapid charging points, from £0.30 per kilowatt hour, to £0.86.

This change would make the council’s fast chargers some of the most expensive in the country, and would put up the cost of fully charging a regular electric vehicle (EV) with one from £12 to £34.

A decision on the suggested hike was deferred, but such a change would make it cheaper to use a car powered by fossil fuels than use the Highland Council’s rapid-charging infrastructure in some cases.

The charging point mapping website Zap-Map has its own journey cost calculator, where you can compare the cost of driving a regular petrol or diesel car with a battery-powered one.

A 109-mile journey from Inverness to Thurso, according to the calculator, would cost you £34 in total, at a rate of £0.31 per mile in an electric Nissan Leaf using £0.86-per-kilowatthour rapid-charging points.

But using a petrolpowered Ford Fiesta, the same journey would be just £18, at a cost of £0.16 per mile and with petrol costing £1.64 per litre.

The UK and Scottish governments are both pledging to phase out the need for new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030, in order to reduce our overall carbon footprint.

But fears have now been raised that uptake of electric vehicles in the future could prove slow if EV costs go up.

Gavin Thomson, transport campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said that “running electric cars is much cheaper than the high and unpredictable costs of fossil fuels, and it needs to stay that way”.

He said he thinks that a “huge spike in the cost of charging electric vehicles is likely to put off new users”, and argued that we are in a time when “we need to rapidly move to sustainable transport and electric vehicles”.

According to Transport Scotland, transportation is Scotland’s single biggest contributor to climate change, “emitting over a quarter of all our greenhouse gas emissions”.

And of that quarter, “the largest share of transport emissions comes from cars, accounting for 38%”.

Mr Thomson continued: “We urgently need to make big changes to how we get around.

“While reducing car use by investing in walking, cycling and public transport is crucial to this, certain journeys will still need private cars, which is why transitioning to electric vehicles is so important.”

Neil Greig, from IAM Roadsmart (formerly the Institute of Advanced Motorists), said: “Sudden, huge increases in the cost of EV charging will almost certainly slow down uptake, in our view.”

Highland councillor Patrick Logue, himself an EV driver, said: “With electric cars representing less than 1% of all Highland vehicles, making it actively cheaper and easier to continue driving petrol and diesel cars directly contradicts the council’s stated climate ambitions.”

Mr Logue said the issue of rising charging prices simply adds to other problems plaguing EV drivers, like finding the charging point you need in order to complete your journey is broken.

WARNING: Increasing tariffs would give drivers little incentive to ditch petrol and diesel cars, it has been argued.

Gavin Thomson.