Citizens Advice response to the Environment and Climate Change Committee’s inquiry into electric vehicles
As statutory advocate for energy consumers, Citizens Advice welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Environment and Climate Change Committee’s inquiry into electric vehicles.
To inform our response to this call for evidence, we have drawn on analysis of contacts to our consumer service about electric vehicles since 2016 and insight from our recent research exploring people’s experiences of electric vehicle public charging.
Government should maintain clear pathways and visible targets to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles. This is critical not only for business and industry but also for affordability and consumer confidence.
We see low consumer confidence about electric vehicles, affordability and insufficient public charging as the major obstacles to the achievement of the government’s 2030 and 2035 phase-out dates.
To improve consumer confidence in electric vehicles we are calling for enhanced consumer protections, broader accessibility standards for public charge points and a national information campaign about how households can contribute to net zero.
To improve affordability we are calling for a reduction of VAT on public charging costs from 20% to 5%.
To address the current insufficient public charging infrastructure, we urge the government to follow through with the proposals in the 2021 consultation on the future of transport regulatory review: zero emission vehicles and confirm when it plans to enact the necessary legislation.