Howard
As you suggest, the infrastructure to put in high power chargers won't be cheap, so councils will be looking to recoup their costs. Unlike car manufacturers they won't have other revenue sources to subsidise. Obviously big cities will have pollution reduction as a high priority but it is going to cost a fortune. Forecasts are cheap, but implementation is going to be costly for council tax payers if BEV owners are to be subsidised in large volumes.
It is an interesting situation.
Historically we would have had several companies going at this tooth & claw, raising cpital by issuing equity & then storming into build programs, but one can't do much in the UK without satisfying various local planning laws & sweetening vested interests. E.g. Who owns the pavements & the roads & how much will they charge you to add charging points & such.
The build out of charging is small compared to the build out of the gas main, the electric grid, even the transition to natural from town gas or the build out of petrol stations.
I imagine we go along at a snails place as each of the many vested interests takes bites out of the process, like the slow roll out of fibre, or Boris, if he keeps his job, commands that the UK goes BEV now.
I would like to think the politicians will make this happen & there is clearly some treasury support giving the exemptions of Benefit in Kind tax for electric vehicles, but I fear the vested interests will attempt to slow the whole business & the electric utilities will raise electric power rates substantially for nothing other than margin.
There is a huge commercial opportunity here to create wealth & make the country better, but I fear the UK is incapable of making it happen & we will just see lots of price rises & a very slow roll out creating an unhappy collision between reality & rhetoric that will eventually break to going hell for leather for BEV.
The folk who have invested in solar & storage will do very well. Some one with their own system who has a company car & saves the BIK tax will have a very substantial windfall that will offset the capex in the short term & bring benefits for perhaps 20 years. Of course many folk do no live in the same house for 20 years, but I foresee a time quickly where a house with out solar & storage will go for a discount to one that has, especially as the tax & contract that are now in place are not as generously as they were only a short time ago so that adding solar is becoming a more expensive proposition only working out well if the house hold has electric cars.
Regards,
