Viva Brighton Issue #78 August 2019

FEATURE
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Electric Vehicles
Feel the power
There should be a
disclosure at the start of
this article: since getting
an electric car two years
ago, I’ve become an EV
evangelist.
And I’m not the only one:
the last four years have
seen a remarkable surge
in demand for electric
vehicles in the UK, with new registrations of
plug-in cars rising from 3,500 in 2013 to more
than 214,000 by the end of May 2019.
Figures from the Department of Transport show
there were 400 plug-in vehicles in Brighton and
Hove at the end of 2018, and we could soon
see more drivers making the switch with the
installation of more than 200 charging points
across the city.
The city council was awarded a £300,000
grant in May last year from the Office of
Low Emission Vehicles, news which has been
welcomed by campaigners from Electric
Brighton, a community initiative that seeks to
encourage Electric and Low Emissions vehicle
ownership in the city.
The group has been steadily building up a map
of demand in the city with at least 100 people
pledging to swap their polluting cars for an
electric model if there were more charging
points available.
Tom Kiss from Electric Brighton believes
the move to more sustainable transport is
“inevitable”, adding: “I think that most people
don’t want to drive around polluting the air if
they can avoid it.”
He explains: “it is a chicken-and-egg scenario
whereby there needs to be a demonstrable level
of demand to justify installing chargers, but
Photo by Thomas Kelley
where people will not buy an
electric vehicle unless they
have reassurance there is
somewhere to charge.
“So really, the chargers have
to come first to provide
that reassurance to people.
Having a presence on the
streets and seeing people
charging their vehicles also
acts as an advertisement to people that it is a
viable option and it is possible to move away
from oil.”
Brighton & Hove City Council is soon to
announce the successful bidder to install the
charging points. Most should be in place by the
end of October and – if more funding is found –
more points can be installed.
With the problem of convenient charging
points on the road set to be solved, what are the
advantages of owning an electric vehicle?
New cars now boast a range of 200 miles or
more, explains Tom, and, when it comes to
running costs, electric vehicles can cost far less
than petrol or diesel alternatives. “Most obvious
is fuel cost, where there can be a 70% saving
over petrol or diesel and 2.5p a mile can be
achieved relatively easily with an electric vehicle.
“But there are other less obvious savings too.
Regenerative braking in electric vehicles means
that costly brake pads are used very little: the
first Nissan Leaf added to the fleet of electric
taxi company C&C taxis in Newquay clocked up
over 100,000 miles still on its first set of brake
pads.”
There are far fewer mechanical parts to break as
well, so you really can make big savings. All the
more reason to join our friends electric.
Ellie Evans
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