FIONA HOWARTH says Britain hasn’t fallen out of love with EVs

Electric cars have exploded in recent months.

After months of booming post-Covid sales, consumer interest in electric vehicles has picked up.

Rising energy prices, high prices for new cars, a lack of charging infrastructure and unreliable appliances, range concerns and a general lack of desire to ditch petrol and diesel models have led to a decline in public interest in EVs.

One of the most recent critics of the move to electric cars is actor and supercar madman, Rowan Atkinson…

The Blackadder and Mr Bean star claimed he felt ‘a bit cheated’ by electric cars and has urged friends not to buy them.

But not everyone agrees, and that includes Fiona Howarth.

Fiona – who is CEO at Octopus Electric Vehicles – says there is ample evidence that the British public’s love affair with battery-powered cars will continue.

Below she gives her thoughts on the electric car debate – and her take on Mr Atkinson’s take on electric cars…

Fiona Howarth is an electric car expert and the CEO of Octopus Electric Vehicles – the EV leasing arm of the green energy provider

As Mr Bean, Rowan Atkinson made millions laugh with his slapstick antics. I included.

A few weeks ago, Atkinson reduced electric car drivers to incredulous laughter — but this time it was with his slack facts.

He wrote an opinion piece on anti-electric vehicles (EV) in which he claimed to feel “a bit cheated” by electric cars.

The article was quickly and widely debunked. The Guardian carried it out and published a thorough fact-check five days later, painstakingly explaining why it was wrong.

Doctor Simon Evans dismantled the claim that EVs produced more emissions throughout their lifecycle than petrol or diesel cars.

But I was more interested in one of Atkinson’s other main arguments. He talked about the development of hydrogen-powered cars and painted a picture of drivers filling their cars with hydrogen pumps.

I’ll leave others to point out how insanely expensive and inefficient it is to run cars on hydrogen – not to mention how much worse they are for the environment compared to electric cars, given how hydrogen is currently produced . (To paraphrase another brilliant Atkinson comic creation, Blackadder: Not such a crafty scheme, perhaps?)

What I want to ask is this: why would you want a hydrogen car if you can drive electrically?

I started my low-carbon car journey with hydrogen cars. Fresh out of college, I joined BMW’s hydrogen car team and traveled the world to see if hydrogen cars could become a reality.

Arnold Schwarzenegger even tried to build a hydrogen highway in California, but there were challenges everywhere I went – from the technology to the simple lack of access to clean hydrogen filling stations.

Since then, electric cars have come of age. Whatever you think of Elon Musk, with Tesla he’s done to cars what Apple did to the phone in your pocket – making brilliant technology on wheels that’s fun to drive too.

And more than 30 manufacturers have followed suit – from MG to Audi, Polestar to Porsche; even Toyota and BMW. And the experience just gets better and better.

Far from being “a little soulless” (as Atkinson called them), I hear all the time from exuberant drivers talking about the excitement they get when their foot goes down in a VW ID3 or a Tesla Model Y.

Electric cars are great to drive, they’re better for the planet and you can save £1,000 a year on fuel.

More than nine in ten electric car drivers would not consider going back to petrol or diesel, a Zap-Map survey found last year.

Some newspapers have even reported that EV drivers were ‘sexier’ after a Tinder experiment showed they were more likely to match than their gas-driving counterparts.

If you work for a company with an EV wage sacrifice scheme, they are also an incredible bargain. Drivers can save up to 40 percent per month while driving a brand new electric car.

It is therefore no surprise that sales of electric cars have gained momentum. They were up 60 percent in the year to April and now make up one in six new cars purchased.

Despite what some high-profile doubters in the media claim, the facts show that the British public’s honeymoon with electric cars has only just begun.

And investors have noticed. Octopus Electric Vehicles, the EV leasing company I run, has just received £150m in funding from private equity investment manager Pollen Street Capital. Electric cars make sense not only for drivers, but also for investors who support the market.

We will use it to finance our brilliant salary offer scheme, which not only comes with a new electric car, but also with a charging installation and a reduced energy rate.

Smart EV tariffs aren’t talked about enough – they link to a car or charger to ensure it always charges smartly at a super-cheap rate when the grid is at its greenest.

When was the last time a gas driver could go to a gas station and take advantage of cheap prices thanks to a half-hour drop in demand for it? When will a hydrogen driver ever be able to do that?

The Pollen Street injection brings our total funding raised in just two years to the best part of two-thirds of a billion pounds.

That means we can stock up on more of the incredible range of cars we already offer through the pay sacrifice. In this way we help drivers to make the switch to electric in the most cost-effective way.

Electric cars are essential to help us achieve our Net Zero goals. They are fantastic to ride. They are a bargain to lease on a pay offer basis. They are cheap to use because of innovative rates.

No one is cheated. Don’t be like Bean. Embrace the EV revolution!