Range Anxiety is a “fading memory”

Range anxiety is no longer of major concern amongst electric vehicle drivers according to leading experts… however the ability of the country’s charge point infrastructure to cope with the demand is.

Sales of EVs rocketed by over 76% last year as manufacturers around the world ramped up production and expanded choice. There are now about 140 makes and models available with a further 50 due this year.

Talking to the Daily Express, Greg Fairbotham, CEO of Zoom EV, said that barriers preventing the EV uptake are slowly “fading”.

He told the Express: “With the latest generation EVs and Hybrids, range anxiety is a fading memory and as the used market begins to mature, there are fewer reasons not to switch to pure battery electric vehicles than ever.

“We know that there are more people than ever choosing to switch – sales of EVs were up 76 percent in 2021.”

His comments were supported by Olly Jones, the co-founder at elmo, who said that the future of motoring will be fully electric.

Mr Jones added: “This is driven by growing consumer demand, greater choice, and affordability of electric cars and incentives like lower company car tax rates and avoiding low emission zone charges.

“The arrival of electric cars in the mainstream has been accompanied by the rise in prominence of the subscription providers like elmo as a flexible alternative to leasing or buying a car, with 12 percent of new car registrations predicted to go to subscription providers by 2025. This model is well-suited for consumers nervous about switching to an electric car.”

According to Mr Jones, electric cars were not only becoming more affordable, but also more capable of “catering to people’s lifestyle requirements” - with significantly better ranges than just a few years ago - “and so encouraging people to make the switch.”

However, one of the biggest obstacles for EVs and their owners still remains with experts havingpreviously warned that the UK’s charging network is not sufficient enough to accommodate the EV uptake.

Both Scottish and UK governments have already pledged to major installation projects aimed at tackling the issue.

Earlier this year Scottish Transport Minister Michael Mathieson pledge a further £60million and in March 2022, UK ministers announced plans to spend £1.6billion on upgrading and growing the public charging infrastructure from 30,000 public chargers to 300,000 by 2030.

Jones added: “This is a promising commitment, but the challenge for the Government will be to support initiatives to deploy the right number of units in the right places to support the transition.”