The UK government continues to push its green transport agenda after unveiling plans to ban vans and lorries from city centres in favour of an electric vehicle fleet designed to cut congestion and emissions.

“We will become a world leader in shaping the future of mobility. We are on the cusp of a profound change in how we move people, goods and services around our towns, cities and countryside.” says the government in a recent article outlining their new Future of Mobility initiative. The main aim of the new green government plan is to reduce the 300,000 HGVs and 4,000,000 vans on UK roads with new green delivery vehicles, replacing the millions of petrol and diesel vans which congest city routes.

Cleaner City Centres, Less Congestion

As part of this groundbreaking revolution, the government has issued a Future of Mobility call for evidence to discuss future trends which will shape city centres and UK roads, such as;

• zero emission transport alternatives
• autonomous vehicles
• internet of things and connected services
• new modes of transport, such as passenger drones
• shared mobility
• changing consumer attitudes and new business models

Transport Minister, Jesse Norman, said: “The UK has a long and proud history of leading the world in transport innovation and our Future of Mobility Grand Challenge is designed to ensure this continues.

“We are on the cusp of an exciting and profound change in how people, goods and services move around the country which is set to be driven by extraordinary innovation.

“This could bring significant benefits to people right across the country and presents enormous economic opportunities for the UK with autonomous vehicles sales set to be worth up to £52 billion by 2035.”

Investment But Little Strategy

As part of this new green government plan there will be a tranche of £12.1 million of funding for six projects centred on working the development of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles and associated infrastructure. However, as yet another green initiative is unveiled it highlights yet another fragmented future strategy for the UK, only recently it was shown that the current electricity infrastructure is woefully inadequate to cope with the current 160,000 electric and hybrid plug-in cars on UK roads today.

The recent Road to Zero strategy discusses the impact and requirements needed to support a future filled with electric cars only, it makes no mention of provisions to accept the huge number of electric delivery vehicles expected to leech off the grid. With many delivery vans privately owned or leased the chances of charging at home during peak hours could be higher than anticipated or planned for, causing electricity costs to soar for the rest of us.