UK Government to add electric cars to its fleet – but don’t think the PM will be driving a Tesla Model S

The UK Government has announced it is to start adding electric cars to its fleet, with 150 electric vehicles to be added from this Autumn.

The roll-out of electric cars has not been an exactly overwhelming success, with even the Government’s £5,000 bribe to get you to go electric failing to kick start electric car sales in a meaningful way.

So the Lib Dem bit of the coalition has decided that the Government should lead by example and have declared that the Government Car Service – which supplies cars for ministers and ‘government’ use – will start to acquire electric cars from this Autumn and, as part of the £5 million scheme, the wider public sector will be involved with council, police and NHS fleets looking seriously at EVs.

But this scheme is aimed at the sorts of government cars that do the daily grind; ferrying junior ministers, getting staff to meetings and making deliveries in commercial vehicles.

For those uses, the idea of moving over to BEV or plug-in hybrids is eminently sensible, especially for those government vehicles that spend most of their time in and around London. But the idea the PM – or senior Secretaries of State – will suddenly start rolling round in a Nissan LEAF, plug-in Prius of Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is a long way off the mark.

Cars for the most senior politicians aren’t part of the Government Car Service anyway, but are part of a fleet of cars – often heavily protected – supplied and operated by the Metropolitan Police’s SO1 protection unit.

These cars – cars like the Jaguar XJ and BMW 7 Series – have no obvious electric replacement apart from perhaps a Tesla Model S (although what armouring a Model S would do to its range and performance doesn’t bear thinking about) and the idea the UK PM – or senior Secretaries of State – would run around in a Californian-built Tesla is highly unlikely.

No, this is all about the government looking sensibly at its everyday fleet and realising that vehicles used in confined areas or for local deliveries would benefit if they could do most of that on electricity.

And it makes sense.