Councils receive £36,000 electric car funding

More than £36,000 in government funding will be provided to boost the number of charging points for electric cars in Lancashire, the deputy prime minister has announced.

Nick Clegg pledged to invest more than £9m across the country as he launched a joint campaign with car manufacturers to promote the benefits of ultra low emission vehicles.

Under the plans, Hyndburn Borough Council will receive £26,250 and Pendle Borough Council will receive £10,000. Northern Rail, which runs rail services across the North of England, has also been allocated £322,500 to install charging points in train station car parks.

Major car manufacturers BMW, Nissan, Renault, Toyota and Vauxhall are all backing the Go Ultra Low campaign in a ground breaking partnership with the government to debunk common myths and misconceptions that put drivers off switching to electric or hybrid cars, such as cost and how far the vehicles can travel before being recharged.

Electric car owners do not have to pay car tax or congestion charges and many chargepoints are free to use. The cars cost from just 2p a mile, which means a family that drives an electric vehicle 10,000 miles in a year would save around £1,000 on fuel costs each year.

There are already more charging points than filling stations in London, but to make driving an electric car possible for everyone, the £9m funding will be used to create hundreds more charging points across the country, including 140 new rapid chargepoints which can charge an electric car in less than half an hour. This will cement the UK’s position as one of the best for electric vehicle recharging networks in Europe.

Nick Clegg said: “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. The extremely low running costs of electric cars help drivers save money and we are allocating more than £9m 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.”