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Government allocates £9 million to improve electric vehicle infrastructure

£9million government invest will be used to build more charging points.

The government has announced it will be investing £9 million into the UK’s electric vehicle infrastructure. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said it would use the money to increase the number of charging points, making ownership of the zero-emission vehicles ‘possible for everyone’.

‘Hundreds more’ charging points will be built across the country, 140 of which will be of the fast-charging variety. These ‘superchargers’ allow an electric car to go from empty to fully-charged in around 30 minutes.

The government hopes adding to the 6,000 charging points already in the UK will help cement our position as a global leader in electric vehicles.

The money will come from the £37 million already allocated to improving the UK’s electric vehicle infrastructure. A further £5 million will be used for introducing electric vehicles to public sector and government vehicle fleets.

“Electric cars are one of the most promising of our green industries and we want to secure the UK’s position as a global leader in both the production and adoption of these vehicles,” Nick Clegg explained.

“The extremely low running costs of electric cars help drivers save money and we are allocating more than £9 million to boost chargepoints across the country to help drivers to go green. This means we can lower UK emissions and create high-tech engineering and manufacturing jobs to boost our economy,” he added.

A campain called Go Ultra Low has been setup to try and ‘debunk common myths’ that surround electric car ownership. So far BMW, Nissan, Renault, Toyota and Vauxhall have backed the government project.

Electric cars are cheap to run because they can be plugged in at home, with only the cost of electricity incurred. There’s also no need to tax or pay the congestion charge for electric vehicles and hybrids that meet the required CO2 emissions of 75g/km or less.

The popularity of electric vehicles has been hampered by a number of issues including a high initial vehicle price, battery leasing, 2nd-hand resale fears and range anxiety.

A government grant of £5,000, which can be secured if a vehicle meets certain criteria, was implemented to tempt buyers into taking the plunge.

Thinking of buying a more frugal motor? Check out our top 13 most economical cars round-up.

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