This year, BHM Electrical Services became an approved Office of Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) installer. This means that as a company we can now install charge points for electric vehicles (EV) in homes, service stations and public spaces. Electric vehicles are vehicles that run fully or partially on electricity compared to vehicles that run on fossil fuels. They are clearly the future technology for the automotive industry. “Over 520,000 pure-electric cars were on UK roads by the end of July 2022, and more than 930,000 plug-in models, including plug-in hybrids (PHEV)” Chris Lilly wrote for the Next Green Cars online Green Car-Guide. These numbers are five times the size of EVs we had on UK roads in 2018 (Lilly, 2022). Therefore in this article, I will introduce the OZEV and discuss the positives and negatives of converting to an EV.

The OZEV are a team who works across the UK government to assist the transition to zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) by providing funding towards charge point infrastructures across the country. The government have a programme set up where you can get up to 75% cover on getting an electrical charge point socket installed in your homes, rented properties and places of work (OZEV, 2022). This is a persuasion tool to get more people to convert to electric vehicles in an effort to reduce the emission caused by diesel and petrol-run cars.

BHM Electrical Services can now take care of installing the charge points due to being approved by the OZEV. Our offices are based in Romsey and we service the whole of the South including London and The Isle of Wight. It is vital to check that the person or company who fits your charge points are approved electricians/installers as this would disqualify your claim with the government scheme. In addition, it could seriously damage your electricity circuits costing you further in repairs and the charge point could in fact be placed illegally. Prior to any installation, the approved electrician/installer must consider the placement of both the charge point and the vehicle. It may be that you need permission from the council before installing. For example, when installing multiple charging points in a workplace environment you would in fact need permission from the council.

“Over 520,000 pure-electric cars were on UK roads by the end of July 2022”

Now it may seem complicated, the idea of having a charge point being installed into your property but consider that once it is installed, whenever your vehicle is sat on the drive, it can be plugged in. Charging away while you’re curled up on the sofa with a good book. No more sat in traffic, queueing at petrol pumps! No more driving out of your way to finding a petrol station with a semi-decent price! No more forgetting to put petrol in the night before, making you late to drop the kids at school and then late for work! (Unless, like me, you work from home, just scratch off that last point.) The argument is although owning an electric vehicle certainly saves you money in gas prices, it has a higher purchase price and will in fact add to your electricity bills.

The power for an EV battery to charge is a large amount and so you may be worried about how much that would increase your current electricity bill. Each automotive brand will have varying options depending on the make and models however, to keep your costs low you can do the following to help: Putting the charge point on a timer, researching free public EV chargers in your area with 1,335 of them being in supermarkets (Goodall, 2022) and finally, only charging at off-peak hours 23:00 – 7:00 (Lunn, 2022). The costs for an EV can be up to you and how you charge your vehicle but generally they cost much lower to run than petrol and diesel-based vehicles. Therefore you will save money in the long term by swapping to an EV.

During writing this article it was announced by Jeremy Hunt (Chancellor of the Exchequer since 14 October 2022) that Electric vehicle owners will have to start paying road tax from 2025.

Transport reporter for the Guardian Gywn Topham reports “Industry figures said the imposition of Vehicle Exercise Duty (VED) could slow the transition to electric cars.” One of the biggest financial positives of purchasing an EV which I was about to discuss in this article is that current EV owners do not have to pay tax.

This news came much sooner then expected however, some are happy to have a definitive answer. Thom Groot reports for the Contributor – “The rate will not stay at 2% past 2025 – but it won’t rocket up either, instead lifting by 1% every year for three years, ending up at 5% in 2028.” Ultimately this indicates that you still save money that you currently pay for road taxes if swapping to an electric vehicle sooner rather then later and that once in 2025 and road taxes do apply they will be significantly lower to what you are currently paying. It is shown that owners of conventional cars will most likely see a rise in VED (Topham,2022) which again proves swapping to an EV would save you money in the long term.

Lets dives into the environmental impact of owning an EV over a conventional vehicle. While countries across the globe set goals around climate change, in May it was said that 17 countries have announced 100% zero-emission vehicle targets or to phase-out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2050. (Igini, 2022) An issue in the early 2000’s when EV’s were first becoming known, was the production and afterlife of the battery. A battery is made up of resources like lithium and cobalt which need to be mined from the earth and as you can imagine this releases a high amount of emissions into our atmosphere(Ramos, 2022). Countries are working on and developing other ways to reduce this emission and the more money being poured into the industry the quicker these developments can happen. Overall the lifespan of an EV is greater then a conventional vehicle and so again, long term, the EVs have a lower impact on emissions. The recycling of batteries after use has also been a big topic “while recycling these batteries at the moment is not an easy task, many resources are being invested in making this process feasible and economical.” (Ramos, 2022).