UK government: compulsory installation of EV charge points and insurance for AV drivers

Motorway services and large petrol retailers will have to install charge points for electric vehicles (EVs), under the UK Government's Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill, presented by transport minister John Hayes. In addition, official research estimates that the market for driverless vehicles will be worth £50 billion ($66 billion) by 2035. The bill will increase the access and availability of charge points for EVs, which will have to be ‘smart,' meaning that they can interact with the grid to manage
October 19, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
Motorway services and large petrol retailers will have to install charge points for electric vehicles (EVs), under the UK Government's Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill, presented by transport minister John Hayes. In addition, official research estimates that the market for driverless vehicles will be worth £50 billion ($66 billion) by 2035.


The bill will increase the access and availability of charge points for EVs, which will have to be ‘smart,' meaning that they can interact with the grid to manage the demand for electricity across the country.

Drivers will be able to locate charge points using information from sat navs or mobile apps, regardless of the vehicle make or model.

In 2016, 85.9% of collisions causing injury involved human error; giving AVs the potential to reduce the amount of road traffic accidents. AV drivers will be required to be insured and victims of collisions involving an AV will have access to compensation in line with the existing insurance policies.

Hayes said: “We want the UK to be the best place in the world to do business as a leading hub for modern transport technology; that is why we are introducing the Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill in Parliament and investing more than £1.2 billion in the industry."

James Dalton, director of general insurance policy at the Association of British Insurers, said: “Insurers wholeheartedly support the development of automated vehicles, as they have the potential to significantly reduce the large number of road accidents caused by driver error. We support the approach the Government has taken in the Bill, as this will give the industry time to prepare for the commercial rollout of fully automated driving technology.”

Enforcement

Related Content

  • Australia’s laws are ‘not ready for driverless vehicles’
    May 13, 2016
    Australia’s National Transport Commission (NTC) has released Regulatory Options for Automated Vehicles, a discussion paper that finds a number of legislative barriers to increasing vehicle automation. The paper proposes that there are barriers that need to be addressed as soon as possible to ensure clarity around the status of more automated vehicles on Australia’s roads and to support further trials. In the longer term other legislative barriers will need to be addressed to allow fully driverless vehic
    Read More
  • EVs: Time for a rethink
    December 14, 2021
    Given a growing body of evidence that EVs are not the clean, green machines they are made out to be, Andrew Bunn suggests they can only be part of the puzzle – not the answer to environmental problems
    Read More
  • Trust me, I'm a driverless car
    October 12, 2018
    Developing C/AV technology is the easy bit: now the vehicles need to gain people’s confidence. So does the public feel safe in driverless hands – and how much might they be willing to pay for the privilege? The Venturer consortium’s final user and technology test (Trial 3) explored levels of user trust in scenarios where a connected and autonomous vehicle (C/AV) is interacting with cyclists, pedestrians and other road users on a controlled road network. Trial 3 consisted of experimental runs in the
    Read More
  • WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff releases primer on driverless vehicles
    March 1, 2016
    WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff has released a guide for state, regional and local government officials in responding to the infrastructure and policy changes that the advent of driverless vehicles will require. The guide, Driving Towards Driverless: A Guide for Government Agencies, was researched and written by Lauren Isaac, manager of sustainable transportation at WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff and the firm’s William Barclay. According to Isaac, driverless vehicles have the potential to change all aspects of mobility
    Read More

Highlighted Content