Government must invest £30m in increasing EV sales, report advises

A report commissioned by the Institute of the Motor Industry, has warned the government that it will miss out on a £51 billion annual economy boost if does not make a £30 million investment in specialist electric and hybrid vehicle training for thousands of maintenance and repair technicians in the independent retail sector by 2020.

The report also advised that the government will need to spend more of the £600 million it had set aside to promote the uptake of low emission vehicles, on charging infrastructure across the whole of the UK. It claimed the £40 million allocated to four cities will be inadequate to meet air quality and emissions targets.

The study outlined that plug-in hybrid sales had more than doubled in 2015, with pure electric vehicles increasing by 50 per cent. However, it maintained that the increase could impact on small businesses that will struggle to make the investment needed to provide consumers with choice and value for money.

It highlighted that 90 per cent of independent garages said they would need to retrain existing technicians so they could undertake work on new electric vehicles. The report recommended that the government introduce a license to practice in order to drive investment in the necessary training, by making it illegal for untrained technicians to work on EVs.

Professor Jim Saker, of Loughborough University and author of the report, said: “Anyone working on these high voltage vehicles needs to be properly trained, accredited and licensed. To achieve this, our government needs to introduce or approve a scheme similar to the one we have in place for those working on gas boilers (Gas Safe Register) and the IMI’s Professional Register is a ready-made solution.  More also needs to be done to ensure that the physical infrastructure keeps pace with the rapidly increasing demand for these new technologies, which have the potential to generate a large number of jobs going forward.

“Apprenticeship recruitment in the automotive retail sector has been static in recent years.  What we’re looking at now is a great opportunity to reenergise this sector by attracting more young people to work with these exciting, future oriented technologies.

Steve Nash, IMI CEO, said: “Electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid vehicles are no longer the future, they are here now and the numbers are set to increase very rapidly over the next few years with all manufacturers broadening their product offerings. The problem is that to the uninitiated they are just another car with some new technology, when in fact they are nothing like the cars we have all been driving up to now. 

“There are currently around 1,000 people qualified to work on high voltage electrics and they all work for the vehicle manufacturers, who will continue to train their own staff to meet demand. However, as the volumes of these new vehicles grow there are thousands of other technicians that will be challenged to offer that kind of service and without some sort of license requiring them to be properly trained and qualified, independent garages that make up 85 per cent of the businesses operating in the service and repair sector will not invest in that kind of training.

“That means that their staff will either risk their lives working on unfamiliar systems that carry lethally high voltages, or they will simply refer everything back to the franchised dealers, reducing competition in the sector. I cannot imagine that either of those outcomes is likely to be palatable for the government.”

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