Millions of second cars could be electric, AA president told electric car industry
Sparking the electric vehicle revolution could be achieved by flipping current thinking and homing in on the family second car, Edmund King, the AA’s president, will argue at this week’s Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership conference prior to the Battersea Formula E Grand Prix this weekend.
In his presentation ‘Can we electrify mainstream motoring?’, King makes the connection between the realities of family car use and how second cars could be circuited into powering the electric vehicle revolution. He will argue that millions of second cars could relatively easily be electric vehicles.
The realities are that 74% of AA members park their cars overnight off the road and on their own land (58% on the driveway, 16% in the garage) where, potentially, they could be charged overnight.
About 50% of 18,688 respondents in AA Populus survey in April have access to two or more cars, 12% of them drive the ‘second’ car.
Second cars are more likely to have access to charging, 79% v 74% overall. Second cars are less likely to be used for long journeys: never drive between 100 and 200 miles a trip – 25% v 15% overall, never drive 200+ miles a trip – 38% v 25% overall.
It is also estimated that 2.5 million second cars could become electric vehicles with home charging and, more importantly, wouldn’t need to be charged away from home.
“The route to introducing an alternative fuel has always been via fleet and business cars, the rationale being that these would start to change opinion by finding their way into the second-hand market or convincing business drivers to extend these new fuels into private use,” says King.
“Electric vehicle range anxiety demands a different approach. We must look where EVs might work, instead of trying to shoehorn them into travel patterns for which they are currently not best suited.
“Even though the purchasing power and volume discounts of car fleets traditionally create a gateway for introducing new but initially expensive technologies, it hasn’t taken off with electric vehicles.
