Electric Vehicles and EV Charging Infrastructure: December 2020 Update

Boris's 10-Point Plan for “Green Industrial Revolution” - The Government has committed to taking decisive action to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030 in order to accelerate the UK's transition to electric vehicles (EVs). However, sales of hybrid cars and vans which are able to travel, “significant distance with no carbon coming out of the tailpipe” will be permitted until 2035. The Government has announced its intention to provide grants to help people to purchase EVs and to install EV charge point infrastructure (with a focus on rapid charging on motorways and major roads) as part of an initial £1.3bn package to support the “electrification of UK vehicles and their supply chains” and to support thousands of potential new high quality jobs in the sector. Please follow the link to access the 10-Point Plan.

National Infrastructure Strategy - The commitments relating to EVs in the 10-point plan (discussed above) have been transposed into the Government's strategy report. Additional points of note include: investment of £90m to fund local EV charging infrastructure; the continuation of Plug-In Car, Van, Taxi and Motorcycle Grants until 2022-2023; and an announcement that the Government will be consulting on “payment methods and payment roaming, opening up chargepoint data increasing the reliability of the charging infrastructure and ensuring pricing transparency” later this year. Please follow the link to access the National Infrastructure Strategy report.

National Security and Investment Bill (NS&I Bill) - The NS&I Bill was published on 11 November 2020. The bill creates a mandatory notification regime for M&A transactions in “sensitive sectors”, which include energy, transport and communications. The requirement for notification will capture deals resulting in shareholdings of 15% or more. The bill is not yet in force but will have retrospective effect as from 12 November 2020. Please follow the link to our blog article for more detail.

Cornwall Council Secure EDRF Funding for EV Charging - Cornwall Council have secured £2.9m in funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to install more than 150 EV charge points, bringing the number of publicly available charge points in Cornwall to upwards of 360 by 2023. This comes as timely reminder that the EDRF programme will continue to invest in projects after 31 December 2020 (until the end of 2023) and will therefore still be available to assist public-sector organisations with structural investment into the low-carbon economy.

 CMA Launches Review of EV Charging Sector - A publication from the Competition Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed that it will be launching a market study into the electrical vehicle (EV) charging sector as part of the commitments which it outlined in its 2020/2021 Annual Plan. The CMA's review will focus on two broad themes:

• how to develop a competitive EV charging sector whilst also attracting crucial private investment for growth; and
• how to ensure people using EV charge points have confidence that they can get the best out of the service.

Service providers, industry bodies, regulators, local authorities and consumer groups are invited to share their views by 5 January 2021.The CMA are confident that they will be able to conclude the study well within the deadline of 1 December 2021. Updates will be available here.