Isramart : North East England eyes low carbon future

Isramart news:
"It is a watertight, fingertight, dustproof box," grins David Fothergill as he installs a charging point for electric cars in the Newcastle City Council car park.

A massive roll-out of electric motoring infrastructure has started in the North East of England as part of a plan to develop the region into a so-called "low-carbon economic area for ultra low-carbon vehicles".

Firms or organisations wanting to install charging points are having their investment matched out of the public purse, so installing a charging point costs them £2,500 rather than £5,000.

And the council itself is installing 88 charging points this year, says Sally Herbert of Newcastle City Council.

Add the hundreds of charging points being installed by neighbouring councils, private companies, supermarkets and universities, and there should be some 620 charging points in the region by the end of the year, she explains.

But best of all, at this stage, "electric car drivers won't have to pay for the electricity they use, nor will they have to pay to park while charging," Ms Herbert says.

Government backing

The UK is about to make a major push to become a leading player in the development of electric motoring.
On Thursday, the government announced that it would be giving consumers a plug-in car grant worth up to £5,000 to anyone buying an electric car from January 2011.

And it announced a £30m fund to pay for the roll-out of 11,000 electric charging points over the next three years in London and Milton Keynes, as well as in the North East.

Trevor Mann, manufacturing boss at the Japanese carmaker Nissan's Sunderland factory, which produces about a third of the cars manufactured in the UK, is delighted.

"The infrastructure is very important to us," he says.

"Nobody will buy an electric car purely because it's electric or because it's green," he points out - so it will have to be a practical proposition for consumers.

Electric future

Nissan is emerging as an electric motoring pioneer within the motor industry.
Last year, Nissan's chief executive Carlos Ghosn outlined plans to commit some 2,000 engineers and development staff to a 4bn-euro electric vehicle programme.

"The electric car will account for 10% of the global market in 10 years," he told BBC News during last year's Geneva motor show.

So no wonder Mr Mann is excited about the future.

"We nailed our colours to the mast and said we would become a global leader in zero-emission automotive mobility," he says.

Green Leaf

Nissan is launching its first electric car, Leaf, later this year. Last week, the company announced a global deal with rental car firm Hertz to help showcase the car to consumers.
Mr Mann hopes the car will be manufactured in Sunderland, already the UK's largest car factory.

Nissan has invested some 200m euros in a battery factory here, so there are a lot of good reasons why the model should be built in this factory, he says.

"We've had a fantastic track record of winning new models," he says.

"They've been won, not just on manufacturing efficiency, but also on total delivery cost - including parts and materials, logistics, taxes and duties, as well as the cost of sales."