Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I welcome to the Committee Mark McCall, who is the chair and a director of the Electric Vehicle Association Northern Ireland (EVANI), and Darren Henderson and Mark Anderson, who are directors. I know that today's subject is of interest to members.

Members, are you content that the evidence be recorded by Hansard?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I invite you to give us your briefing. We have substantial written evidence. This is a pertinent issue, and I am keen to come to members' questions, so, if you would like to give a brief overview for five minutes or so, we will then go to members' questions.

Mr Mark McCall (Electric Vehicle Association Northern Ireland): Good morning, Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all this morning. I will keep my presentation brief, as the Chair mentioned. I understand that you have the most up-to-date written version of that in your packs this morning.

Founded in 2016, EVANI has been active for eight years, and, in 2021, we transitioned to a not-for-profit community interest company. Our mission as a social enterprise is to promote electric vehicles (EVs) in Northern Ireland and advocate for the interests of users and the broader industry. Since incorporating, we have conducted over 500 stakeholder meetings, giving us a unique perspective on the local EV landscape.

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge the progress that has been made here, especially in the past two years. Northern Ireland has gone from having 20 rapid chargers for the whole Province to over 150 today. So much has been achieved in a short period. To many long-term EV drivers here, the public charging network now is unrecognisable from what it was just 24 months ago. Of course, that progress must be considered against our neighbours, and it is important to note that, using the metric of chargers of all speeds per head of population, Northern Ireland sits at one third of the UK average and at around 50% of the Ireland ratio. Regardless of that, it is encouraging to note that EV ownership per capita here stands at around 75% of the UK average. That shows that EVs are working well here and have huge potential in our sustainable transport mix.

There is much more to do, and our written presentation outlines the areas that we need to work on together in the next few years to continue that progress. They include policies that enable the accelerated growth of our public charging network; planning policy to support growth — we would like to see ESB spending the £3·2 million of Levelling Up Fund money that it was granted three years ago; new options for home charging for those without off-street parking; promoting positive, accurate messaging on EVs and addressing the misinformation that persists; socialising grid connection costs and installing smart meters; and implementing the zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate.

The Climate Change Act 2022 set out ambitious decarbonisation targets, and electrifying transport will be crucial to meeting them. In many ways, it is the low-hanging fruit, especially given the challenges ahead in other sectors. We believe that the following two quotes capture the importance of electric vehicles succinctly. The Climate Change Committee says:

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland put it this way:

While electric vehicles are not a panacea, their role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving our air quality and supporting our energy transition is vital.

Again, many thanks for your interest this morning. We will be pleased to answer your questions.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you very much. We greatly appreciate that. It was interesting to read through some of your written submissions as well. We are conscious of the climate change targets that we have to meet. It is all about that modal shift, and changing attitudes is one of the main things. How powerful is the task force? You talked about the progress that has been made in the past two years: has that progress been down to the task force? What has been the real driving force — pardon the pun — behind that progress?

Mr McCall: Most of the growth has come from the private sector. The task force has a good group of people in the room, but it is under-resourced. As a task force, in year 1, we held monthly meetings; in year 2, we held bimonthly meetings; and, in the first six months of this year, we held only a single meeting. Our departmental colleagues on the task force are overworked and under-resourced. I think that there are four or five people on their EV team, compared with around 20 people working on active travel, which you heard about, I think, at one of your meetings.

The EV task force was working on a comprehensive EV strategy document in 2022. It never got to the quality at which we could release it, and we moved to a six-point action plan, which was released in the interim. We have had no output in the two years since then. We invite the Committee to review what that six-point action plan looks like two years later — its second anniversary is in November. Let us have a look at those six action points and see whether we can give that task force a little more resource so that it can work on an EV strategy document.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. It will be useful for the Committee to look at that in November. The private sector will play a huge role in rolling that out, and our mandate for that is coming down the track. Will that push progression forward? How does that sit with the private sector's willingness to invest, given that Northern Ireland lags behind?

Mr McCall: There was a time when we should have been doing more in the public sector to fill in some of the areas that were not on the map. We always hear that places such as Derry/Londonderry and Omagh and Enniskillen — places west of the Bann — have been under-resourced in this area. There was a time when our local devolved Government should have been spending money in this area, as Scotland and Wales did. We can look back at things such as the blue-green fund. In the first year of that, £7 million of a £20 million fund was left unspent because projects could not be found, so there were financial resources that could have been used for this.

That lack of spending has left us where we are today: lagging behind. In the UK, the average number of chargers per 100,000 population — chargers of all speeds: slow, fast or whatever — is 96. In Northern Ireland, that figure is 33. We have one third of the UK average. You probably saw the graph in your packs in which we appear as an extreme outlier. We missed the opportunity to spend in the past, and that has left us where we are today. Since then, the private sector has come along. Millions of pounds are being spent by the private sector. The Executive's role is probably more around policy: getting barriers out of the way and accelerating the planning process.

Mr Mark Anderson (Electric Vehicle Association Northern Ireland): You asked about the mandate. As EVANI, we represent the broader industry. We have a lot of members from the car industry, including sellers — retailers — and charge point operators (CPOs), so as to balance representation. As you suggested, the CPOs very much say, "The mandate gives us proof that we can invest here. We know the cars are coming; they are guaranteed". They are then able to deliver in a pretty tricky environment. We may want to discuss Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) and getting grid connections later in the meeting.

The car dealerships are a little more reticent. They are asking for some caution on the ZEV mandate. They find NI challenging, and they are really concerned about jobs and their investment in the industry. As our key policy is to get people into EVs, we back the mandate. If Northern Ireland deviates from the rest of the UK, we would like that to be for a good reason. It is essential that, as we get towards 2030, we catch up. If we start at a lower percentage next year, we still want to see the full ZEV mandate implemented by the time we get to 2030. That will be important for us.

Mr McCall: It feels like Northern Ireland is a special case. It almost feels as though we should get some sort of investment package to allow us to catch up, as Mark said, with England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, rather than be given permission to lag behind for years to come. As Mark also pointed out, however, going by speaking over the past month to the big car retailing groups and the leasing companies, there is caution. We want to see an attainable target for Northern Ireland.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I am taking a step back: you said that about £7 million from the blue-green fund went unspent. In layman's terms, what would that have represented for Northern Ireland?

Mr McCall: Look at Scotland, Chair. It has spent about £40 million to date on rolling out a public charging network. It has committed to spending another £50 million or £60 million on, I think, a 50:50 public:private basis. Other devolved Governments have spent tens of millions on public charging, whereas, in the past five years, in Northern Ireland, we have, maybe, spent £500,000 twice, on supporting the on-street residential charge point scheme (ORCS) and the Faster project. We are a smaller country, but I will give you one example. DFI spent £10·2 million on bringing one electrical connection to Foyleside to electrify the bus station and provide chargers for the buses. We are great supporters of public transport and active travel. We certainly believe in that, but, when you look at DFI's figures, you see that the travel survey says that all the buses and trains in Northern Ireland account for 3% of miles travelled here, whereas cars account for 84% of miles travelled. We would like to see some balance and consideration there, with some ambition around the change to electric vehicles.

Mr Darren Henderson (Electric Vehicle Association Northern Ireland): I will finish off on what the £7 million could have done. Had it been spent, the upward curve on the graph that you can see would have started going up sooner. It would have put us on the trajectory to catch up, so not spending the £7 million at that time was a missed opportunity.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We will take further evidence on the mandate from the perspective of the car dealers. What assurances have been given to and what engagement have you had with car dealerships to alleviate their concerns about charging and to help them with consumer choice?

Mr McCall: Maybe Darren could pull up our recent survey results. We do an annual survey, and public charging was the number-one issue over the past few years, but that has changed in more recent times. We now hear that purchase price is the main barrier to entry. That is changing too. There is a famous case from last month. Vauxhall released a new Frontera vehicle, and, for the first time, there is price parity between the electric vehicle and the petrol hybrid vehicle. Stellantis Group, which also makes cars such as the Corsa and the Astra now has a monthly lease that, at £200 per month, is the same price for the petrol vehicle as it is for the EV, the difference being that the EV is leased over four years and the petrol car is leased over three years. Used car prices are competitive at the moment, so there is also, pretty much, price parity. We are seeing lots of things that make it easier for people to get into that. Darren has the quote.

Mr Henderson: The one that I would like to talk about is disinformation. A lot of potential buyers' worries come from the misinformation and disinformation that they get from social media.

EVANI tries desperately to feed back and fight back against that. There should be government support to reduce those numbers. Our survey showed that nearly nine out of 10 — 89% — people came across disinformation as part of their purchase. Those were people with EVs, so you can imagine what it is like for those without. That is part of what we are trying to close out.

Mr McCall: This is the headline in the survey:

Last year, that fell from 67% to 24%, and, in this year's survey, the results of which we published just last week, that has fallen to 12%. That shows a really good trend in rapid chargers over the past three years. I mentioned that we had gone from around 20 to over 150, which is 700% growth in 24 months, with the obvious proviso that growing a small number still gives you a small number. However, there are probably few towns and cities in Northern Ireland that you could not set off to today and be fairly confident that you would get a rapid charge to get you home, which is very different from, say, just two years ago.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Living rurally as opposed to in an urban area is still a block to some consumers. It is a difficulty when you travel distances from a rural area.

Mr McCall: That is a great point. It is a bit of a myth that EVs are good only for short journeys. Mark will maybe tell you about his commute.

Mr Anderson: Mark mentioned the miles travelled. Some 84% of miles travelled in Northern Ireland are by car. I work in an office in Belfast. I live in mid-County Tyrone — or even further down than that. It is 62 miles in each direction. I do about 20,000 miles a year in an EV. I charge at home because I am lucky enough to have off-street parking. About 85% of our surveyed members charge predominantly at home.

Although being rural is difficult, it is also a benefit, in that a lot of rural houses have off-street parking. In cities, the opposite is mainly the case. People in terraced houses are challenged because they cannot charge at home and cannot therefore benefit from cheap electricity. That is probably worth a discussion.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Hopefully, we will come to that in the course of questions. I come to Cathal first.

Mr Boylan: Thank you, Chair, and I am glad that you started off on the right point.

Thank you very much for your presentation. You are welcome. Clearly, we have made progress, and we will not solve everything in an hour's questioning with the Committee. If we have more questions, we will send them on after this conversation.

I would like to get to the responsibility of the Committee. The private market will do what the private market does. We need to look at policies to incentivise and encourage people to get into these vehicles, and there is the issue of price after that.

My first question is on the rural issue. You can hear our debate today, and you will have heard about the issue in Belfast this morning. I know that works are going on. However, for me — I travel from a rural area — there are thousands upon thousands of journeys down the motorways. Rural people are totally reliant on vehicles, so those of us who represent rural areas are keen to incentivise and encourage, because people are totally reliant. There is no way that they will get out there and avail themselves of public transport.

I will not argue the rural versus urban issue. The slightly different challenge in urban settings is to encourage the use of public transport. For EVs in particular, the issue is for us to work with councils. We have certainly made progress on charger points over the past two years, but, if we are serious about encouraging rural people, we need to work with councils. Will you expand on where we are with uptake in rural areas?

Mr Anderson: Being rural, you can benefit from EVs. Travelling further means that you have huge cost advantages. If you charge at night at the discounted electricity rate — it is discounted because the power stations are on and the wind turbines are turning, but nobody is using power — it is about a quarter of the price of diesel. I think that we worked out that it costs £3·50 to travel 100 miles in an EV versus £14 in an equivalent diesel vehicle. That was for a Golf-type car.

You benefit if you can get an EV and are in a position to put one on your street. You get a bigger benefit because you travel lots of miles. The reduced running costs, reduced servicing costs and reduced mileage costs will end up in your pocket. As we said, the rural side of things is proven by that figure of 84%. I have tried to work out how long it would take me to travel to work on public transport. It would be around two and a half hours. I would have to leave the day before to get there on time.

Mr Boylan: How do we close the gap? Where are the players in the game, besides the policy, to encourage people into that? Do you understand? If we are serious about this, that is the kind of conversation that we need to have.

Mr Anderson: One thing that retailers are calling for is help with buying a second-hand EV. Scotland has a grant now: if you want to purchase a second-hand EV, an interest-free loan is available to help you to get over the cost, which is one of the main barriers to getting into EVs. That policy would be worth considering. There is also the misinformation. People believe that they will have to stop on the way to Belfast and spend four hours sitting somewhere charging the car. That is just not the case. I have public charged twice in the past two months, and, each time, it was for four minutes. Those are probably the two main areas that would help with rural adoption.

Mr Boylan: I have just two more questions, Chair. I am mindful that others want to come in. I have seen the other issue. It is a bigger challenge for us, but we have to realise that it is having an impact. Yesterday, the Assembly had a conversation, for loads of reasons, about the haulage industry. That is a big challenge. We know that, in rural areas, lots of people have diversified, especially out in the open countryside. A lot of them are hauliers now. Where do you see the barriers or incentives? What can we do to encourage that?

Mr McCall: Our membership is broadly in the car world, Cathal, probably more than on the commercial side, but it is a good question that certainly needs to be worked on. For example, we noticed that, when a lot of EV charging facilities are going up, not much thought has been given to commercial vehicles, even light goods vehicles like small vans. We need to see more drive-through bays, rather than ones that you reverse into, which are made for cars. That is a good point and one that we need to look at.

Mr Boylan: It is right that it is not a panacea, but it could be a step change towards what we are trying to do with regard to carbon targets.

My final point probably contains a bit of misinformation or maybe not — maybe you will be able to clarify that — but we need to get it out there. It is the issue that people are moving back to diesel and petrol vehicles. That conversation is out there. I have no stats. What is your comment on that, please?

Mr McCall: We have some stats from our survey. Maybe Darren could pull those up. Our survey asked only current EV drivers. These are not opinions; they are hard facts from the experience of drivers. The vast majority of them say that their next car will be another EV.

Mr Anderson: That was 83·5% of the people who were surveyed. As Mark said, EV drivers are likely to or will definitely buy an EV next. It is not the case that people are generally going back to diesel or petrol cars; it is the opposite. The people who said that they were unlikely to buy another EV were 2% or 3% of the number surveyed.

Mr Henderson: The same percentage were satisfied or very satisfied with the range as well. That is an important factor.

Mr Anderson: One of our committee members is involved in the retail industry in the Republic of Ireland. Funnily enough, they said that one of the dealers down there did a promotion where they gave people an EV 24 hours — it was a 24-hour test drive. They got their biggest uptake of EV sales from doing that, the point being that it is about getting people into a car to have a go at it. I think that all of us were lent an EV when we took a diesel car in to get serviced, and we said, "This is great", and have ended up driving EVs. That is the way to do it. That is another thing for the retail industry to really consider: getting people into those cars, whether that is through a local promotion, a council or the Motability scheme, which is important in Northern Ireland and has a bearing on who drives cars in Northern Ireland. It is pushing very much to move its fleet towards EVs. It is about getting people into the cars to make them committed.

Mr Boylan: Finally, finally, Chair, I have just a wee question. It is an interesting conversation. If we were to replicate a model out there that is working at the minute, where would it be? Would it be across these islands or across Europe? Is there something out there that could be a model for an island of this size?

Mr Anderson: I guess that the international, absolute gold standard is Norway. Ninety-four per cent of passenger vehicles sold are now EVs. How did it do that? It had a sovereign wealth fund that put loads of money into infrastructure.

Norway is a cold country, and EVs typically — all cars — have less range in colder weather, but it works there, where 94% of cars sold are EVs.

Mr Boylan: We cannot compete with that.

Mr Anderson: We cannot really compete with that.

Mr Henderson: Scotland, as Mark said, put millions into the infrastructure, support and policies, and it is ahead of the pack in the UK and Ireland.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you. Scotland is a very rural area as well.

Mr McReynolds: Thank you for coming in today. I was not going to ask this question, but misinformation has come up a couple of times now. A couple of months ago, there was a random comment during a Committee meeting that some manufacturers are rolling back from their commitment to EVs. Can you expand on that? Are manufacturers still committed to rolling out EVs?

Mr McCall: If we look at the ZEV mandate target figures for this year, we should not focus on any one manufacturer, because some are less prepared for the transition than others. It is important to look at the industry as a whole. For example, brands like BMW have exceeded their ZEV mandate. Therefore, it is important to look at every player in the industry.

Misinformation is one of the biggest challenges out there. A recent YouGov survey found that 57% of the public, from a sample of 1,000 people, got two or fewer correct out of 10 on questions about EVs, batteries, maintenance, running costs, fires and all the nonsense we hear every day — 57% got only two questions out of 10 correct. There is a massive education job to be done, and I would like to see the Department use its social media. There is no messaging at all from the Executive on the energy transition or the transport transition. We encourage the Executive to do a lot more and talk about the transition and encourage people into electric vehicles.

Mr Anderson: The media is now a click-driven system, and, if an EV factory is ramping down or laying people off, it is easy to say that it is because of that. What they never publish is that there are brands entering the market from China and other places that are EV-only. Several showrooms have opened on the Boucher Road that have just EVs and nothing else, but, if Fiat ramps down by 5% on one EV line, it is a huge headline. From what we see, sales are still progressing and growing significantly across the world.

Mr McCall: The figures for the first half of the year show that 11·6% of new car sales in Northern Ireland were full battery electric, in comparison with about 16% across the UK. Yesterday, we got the figures for August in Northern Ireland, and 15% of new cars were full battery electric.

Mr McReynolds: Mark, can you expand on your comments about ESB and the Levelling Up Fund money? What was promised in the past, and what has and has not happened?

Mr McCall: ESB presented to the Committee about three years ago, and it had won a £3·27 million award from the Levelling Up Fund. ESB issued a press release stating that it would transform the network in Northern Ireland and convert some of its slower AC chargers to DC and open several rapid charging hubs around Northern Ireland. It has replaced some of its AC chargers, which are the slower destination chargers —.

Mr Henderson: With the newer AC.

Mr McCall: With AC, yes. We have seen it replace one or two rapid chargers, but the majority of the DC fast/rapid charging work that ESB was to do has not happened. We believe that the public funding expires as early as January 2025, and we are within a few months of the money going unclaimed. We have written to ESB several times since April and received no response on its plans before the funding runs out. Is it possible for the Committee to write to ESB to ask what is going on? If ESB is not going to claim the levelling up funding, can it be routed to a charge point operator that is more engaged here so that the money is not wasted?

Mr McReynolds: I have met a couple of charging point operators in recent weeks and months. I understand that the focus today is DFI and the role it plays in improving EV infrastructure across Northern Ireland. I am, however, getting the impression from a couple of charging point operators that Northern Ireland Electricity is a major barrier. Getting the charging point built is OK, but the issue is getting it on the grid. Do you have any comments on that?

Mr McCall: Mark might be able to speak to that.

Mr Anderson: I have similarly been speaking to charge point operators. These things deliver lots of power very quickly, so, generally, it needs a new grid connection. Some of the hubs that are being put in provide several megawatts. They are significant. The charge point operators and other people in the energy industry tell us that the length of time and the cost involved in getting a grid connection in Northern Ireland is significant compared with other jurisdictions. For example, it is between two and 10 times more expensive in Northern Ireland compared with Scotland. That is because GB has done some socialisation of the grid connection. It spreads some of the costs of upgrading the network across everybody. Currently, that is not the policy in Northern Ireland, but we understand that DFI is in the process of bringing that in. When we are speaking with the regulator and colleagues in DFI, they say that it will happen in Q1 or Q2 next year.

Mr McCall: DFE.

Mr Anderson: DFE, sorry. That will, hopefully, help with costs.

The second barrier is the timeline for grid connection quotes. People say, "I am going to put a site here, and this is how much power I will need", and NIE does some calculations to work out a cost. That should take around 15 days, which is what is quoted on its website, but the CPOs tell us that every charging point application is treated as a complex version of a grid connection, which takes it out of that 15-day period and means that it becomes an unknown. It could be nine or 10 months.

You can imagine a situation where CPOs are trying to develop four or five hubs — maybe even more — across Northern Ireland. They might have lots of grid connections sitting there in that nine- or 10-month window, and then the price comes back, and it is seven figures. Those proposals are no longer viable, and they have to put them in the bin, and then they have to find another one site and wait another nine months to get another grid connection. Some CPOs have said that the costs are bad, but the time delay is the most challenging thing. We think this will be the norm soon, so, hopefully, NIE will soon change from considering the applications as being complex and putting them through a process of delay for grid connections. That could speed it up.

CPOs told us that investment has come into Northern Ireland to develop. They have put salespeople on the ground to find sites, and they have spent six or nine months trying to do that, and then they have said, "That cannot work". They have taken that money and gone to Scotland or England.

Mr McReynolds: Do you have any information on how long it takes in the South or in Great Britain? It may be months here, but is it faster there?,

Mr Anderson: This week, a CPO told us that it had had a reply from the ESB in the South within 10 days about the price. It put in an application, and, 10 days later, it knew how much it would cost them. We are talking six or nine months here.

Mr McCall: It is important to mention that NIE is waiting for news on regulatory price control (RP) 7. It is important that we back NIE and that it gets the investment that it needs. Obviously, the grid will change massively over the next period, and we need to make sure that the budgets that it has applied for are passed. We also support NIE's call for investment ahead of need, so that we are not always reacting in this country and always behind the curve. We need to grow the network organically, and that will create opportunities for industry and for the connection of renewables and EV charging. The grid will undergo a massive change over the next decade. It is vital that we support NIE, particularly around the RP7 funding.

Mr Henderson: It is also putting maps of the existing infrastructure online. In theory, once those are released, that should allow some self-service. People will be able to look at where the power is to see whether something is viable. That will also be a great step forward. However, once an application is made, the turnaround time needs to be quick.

Mr McReynolds: Finally, you said that NIE is putting it online. Do you have any idea of the timescale for when that will happen?

Mr McCall: I have heard that it could be the end of the year. As Darren said, it is like a system where you can drill down into a map in a browser and see whether there is capacity. By clicking a few buttons, you can get an indicative cost. That will certainly massively speed things up and get rid of a lot of applications that are not viable, because they would never go there. Another thing to mention is that, if the socialisation of costs thing comes in on connections — there is talk of it coming in perhaps April next year — we will presumably see a massive influx of new, cheaper applications for factories and —.

Mr Anderson: Yes, factories, renewable generation and all the rest. It will put NIE under huge pressure. In GB, Ofgem is bringing in policy to prevent zombie applications. If you have an application and it is accepted, that power generation is sidelined for you, but maybe the project never makes financial close, so it does not get built. It is trying to do work to make sure that that cannot happen. Basically, if you have planning, you get your grid connection, but it is held for only so long until you prove that you have the finance in place to build the project. We do not have that policy in Northern Ireland — it is probably a DFE or regulator policy rather than the Department for Infrastructure — but, if it ever appeared, that is something else that members could support.

Mr Henderson: NIE, the distribution network operator (DNO), needs to get ahead of this because, once those things start to move down, a wave will come. They need to be resourced to meet that wave.

Mr Dunne: Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation and submissions. There are a couple of points that I am keen to explore a bit more with you. One of the challenges is crossing the pavement. That helpful photograph tells 1,000 words. Being realistic, a key challenge is that 20% of properties in Northern Ireland do not have a driveway. That figure increases to 60% in the Belfast area. We could extend that to the greater Belfast area and even places that I represent in North Down, for example, where there are large housing estates and so on. It would be a huge challenge. Many homeowners do not have a reserved space. You can imagine how they park at one end of the street one night but then, when they come back, somebody else is in that space. There are loads of logistical challenges. I am sure that you have done work on them and are keen to do more. You mentioned that the Housing Executive also has a role to play. Do you see that as a big obstacle? Obviously, you recognise it.

Mr McCall: We do, Stephen. It is important that we keep moving ahead. There are, I think, 400 local authorities in GB to deal with. We have DFI — a single authority — in Northern Ireland looking after the jurisdiction of pavements and roads. We see that as an advantage in many ways. The companies that are rolling out the cross-pavement solutions have to deal with 400 different councils. We met one of the companies in June 2022, which was over two years ago, along with the previous chair of the EV task force. We have been encouraging DFI to roll out at least some sort of trial here, but that has not happened yet. We met the Housing Executive in February to talk about that, and we believe that it installed a trial of one of those in one of its depots just last week. That is probably the first one in Northern Ireland.

You made a valid point about not being able to park outside your house. There are a couple of things in that regard. Quite a lot of the emails that we receive from people say, "I live in a quiet cul-de-sac. I get parking outside my house every night. It would be ideal for me". This will not solve everyone's problem, but it will certainly bring thousands more EV drivers on board. In our survey, the most common answer was, "I charge several times per week"; I think that nearly one in four —.

Mr Anderson: Sixty-four per cent.

Mr McCall: Is that once a month?

Mr Anderson: "Several times a month" was 20%, so over 80% are between several times a week and several times a month.

Mr McCall: What I am trying to say is that people do not charge every night.

Mr Dunne: Obviously, so many homes have two, three or more cars as well, which adds to the challenge.

Mr McCall: You need that space maybe once a week for many people. The way the system works is that the cable comes out to the kerb, and you have three spaces to choose from outside where you can plug in.

Mr Dunne: Yes, but that is a huge challenge.

Mr McCall: It certainly is.

Mr Dunne: All of us around the table engage with constituents every day on so many issues. You can only begin to imagine some of the issues around that, never mind people tripping over the cable and whatever else. It is certainly a challenge, and it is good that you are proactive on it.

Mr Anderson: We have it as a key ask. We think that those people are missing out on the option of being able to home-charge. It is important. Having said that, we completely agree: it will not be the silver bullet in EV uptake. There are lots of options. Another thing that DFI could encourage is workplace charging. There are some workplace charging grants. People are getting into a car and driving to work. They might get charging at home once or twice a week, but they could probably charge at work two or three times a week as well. The mix of both could definitely solve the problem.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that.

I have a question about the costs. We are all aware of the cost-of-living challenges, and costs are prohibitive, certainly the cost of new EVs. Norway was mentioned, and I have been reading about how there are now more EVs than petrol cars there. The GDP of Norway is around three times higher than the UK's. We have to recognise that. What is the average price of an EV today? Are there any facts or figures on that for here?

Mr Anderson: It is hard to give an answer on the average price of an EV. Mark McCall mentioned this earlier, but one of the things that we are talking to retailers about is price parity. If we sell only 10% of a product, we do not have critical mass and economies of scale, but a lot of the groups are working really hard. The retailers tell us that it is no longer a ticket price that is important in a car sale; it is a monthly price. Having the benefit of maybe being able to spread payments over four years versus three years can bring price parity per month in line with EVs, because your servicing costs are lower. There is salary sacrifice through businesses as well. People who are working can save on the tax, and that can easily bring price parity to people for EVs.

We have already spoken about running costs. The other thing is the Motability scheme. As we have a car-centred culture, the Motability scheme here is significant. Forty-seven per cent of cars sold in Northern Ireland are through Motability, and Motability is driving really hard to turn that fleet into EVs. It is coming across the same challenges that we are: people cannot get charging at their home because they do not have a parking space etc. It is funding the cars, so, if its goal is to get people into EVs, it almost takes some of the price issues away.

Mr McCall: On the price thing, this is one of the comments from the survey that came out last week:

That is a good one to mention; it is a brand new car — an EV — at £15,000.

Mr Dunne: I appreciate that. I have a final question about the engagement with the private sector. Obviously, our modern petrol stations are on every corner of the country. I know that, locally, some have upgraded them recently with the new rapid systems. What about your engagement with Maxol, BP and so on? How is that going for you?

Mr McCall: We meet them pretty regularly. You mentioned BP, and it is a good case in point, because it has 100 locations around Northern Ireland that it is in the middle of rolling out to. BP has had to use a charger that has a large battery on board, because it is going behind the meter. It does not have a new grid connection. It is so expensive and takes so long to get a grid connection that BP is putting a charger in that charges up overnight with batteries and then provides charge to the cars during the day. That is one thing to point out. Maxol is another great example. It is a local company that is making a big difference. Again, in our survey, forecourts were the number-one location where people ask for charging.

Mr Dunne: OK. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Planning is an issue that we have not really touched on but was mentioned in your opening remarks. What specifics need to be tackled there policy-wise to help with the roll-out?

Mr McCall: I will give you one example, Chair. Mark can talk about it. We brought up at the last meeting that one council area in Northern Ireland is using 30-year-old Department of the Environment document guidance to stop chargers going in where they are really needed.

Mr Anderson: I am not sure that it was a CPO, but it was probably a smaller developer that wanted to basically place a charger or a number of chargers at a site — a shop or something. They had a pre-application discussion with the planner, and the result of that was that the planner said, "Well, there is a 12-mile rule that is in policy IC15", which was a Department of the Environment document that basically stated that service facilities could not be within a 12-mile radius. Everybody is probably thinking, "I can think of two petrol stations beside each other", so that has not transferred. That is just an example of where a policy was picked up by a planner at a local authority and used to prevent the planning application going ahead. It sounded like that was what they were going to use. That would be an ask. That might only be one council area, but it would be an ask that planners could be informed that that is something not to use against EV chargers. They should be in every park-and-ride, petrol station and shopping centre. In our view, that is what is will be required.

Mr McCall: That and maybe a green lane through planning for things that will help us achieve our Climate Act targets.

Mr Anderson: I could send you details on that.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): It would be great if you could. Mark McCall picked up there on a point that we have heard on the Committee. Some people have said that we need a green lane in planning to meet the targets and the government policy that we have. Is planning policy a barrier to the investors? I recognise that this is also private sector. Is this a barrier to those investors?

Mr McCall: It is.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We heard a wee bit about some people pulling out there.

Mr McCall: The case that Mark gave was a good one. A company had come to Northern Ireland, set up and employed people here, and it literally could not spend the money that it wanted to spend. After a year of not being able to get a charger in the ground, it said "We are going to Ireland or GB". Northern Ireland lost that investment because of the delays in things like planning. It is vital.

Another thing we hear from the CPOs is that there are permitted development rights to install a charger, but the permitted development rights do not include the cabinet that supplies the electricity to the charger so, often, they have to put in for planning permission anyway.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. I am sorry. Andrew was trying to get in, but — Cathal, is it on this point?

Mr Boylan: It is on this very point, Chair. As I said in my opening remarks, we can do our bit from the legislative point of view on policy, but, unless all the players are on the field, we can do nothing. You mentioned those things with NIE. If you build that house in the countryside, you cannot get it connected to water or heat, so we are having more mature conversations. These people need to be in. The private sector needs to be in, if we are serious. The only alternative to that is to use a big stick and bring in legislation to force people, and that is what we do not want to do.

That is a good conversation that you brought up. We need all the players on the field, and we need them all in here talking about how we can go forward with it all. That is the only way that this will work. There has been change over the last five or six years, maybe because of COVID or whatever, but there has been more engagement across the sectors. There is no point in NIE sitting out, saying that, "We will do our bit, and you do policy." We need a collective. Conversations like this start the process. Hopefully that is the way that we will go forward. Thanks, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Andrew has been patient, so I will come to him now.

Mr McMurray: No, you are OK. Like a lot of these things, you get brought to asking questions by listening to what is going on. That is 100%.

I wonder how the ZEV mandate and increasing investment in charger points will be effective, especially in the rural areas. Do you see it being effective? There are an awful lot of big car parks, essentially: park-and-rides and park-and-shares. Often the infrastructure is not there. Then again you have already touched on the grids. I just wonder how those things overlay.

I will keep my points together, Chair, just to keep it moving on. What about the public fleet, the fleets of public bodies and statutory agencies? How is that transferring across? From my experience, sometimes not the excuse, but the reason is that there is not that grid infrastructure in some of the statutory agency places. I suppose those points are connected.

I was at a rural chamber of commerce meeting the other night, and one of the top things they were talking about was, "There are not enough charging points in our town." When you drive across, there are big car parks with no charging points. That is the point that I am trying to make, Chair.

Mr Anderson: Do you not think that that is a perfect planning policy item? If somebody is building a park-and-ride or a car park, at a minimum, the infrastructure should be put in the ground — cable ducts and ports — so that, at some point in the future when grid connection is affordable and available, we can put the chargers in place. That should really be the case now. I know that Translink is trying to do that with its park-and-rides. That policy would work really well.

Mr McCall: You mentioned the public fleet. We asked a question of the Department earlier this year, and around 0·3% of DFI's fleet are electric. In November 2021, the then Minister signed the Glasgow declaration that all cars and vans in Northern Ireland would achieve zero emissions by 2035. We should be well on that journey. I do not know if things like ministerial cars are EVs yet, but we would certainly like to see the public fleet leading by example. Obviously, not all vehicles can be replaced yet, but there are plenty of cars and light vans that could be.

Mr Henderson: By way of comparison, 81% of government vehicles in Scotland are plug-in vehicles. They are not necessarily pure EVs; they could be plug-in hybrid vehicles. One hundred per cent of Ministers' vehicles are electric.

Mr McMurray: Is that a mixed message?

Mr McCall: It goes to the part where the whole transition is pretty invisible from the Executive. We need to see much more being said, and demonstrating it by moving their own vehicles would be good.

Mr Henderson: Part of that would be to combat the misinformation. If people see the vehicles being used, and the people who are using the vehicles understand how well they can work, that messaging will help combat the misinformation. When someone gives misinformation about an EV in a meeting, Ministers will be able to directly answer from their own experience.

Mr Anderson: It is an interesting point. When people say that they do not have chargers in their local town, that may, perhaps, be part of the misinformation, because the last thing you do is use a public charger beside your house. If you are lucky enough to have off-street parking and a home charger, you will charge to get to your house so that, when you go to bed that night, your car sits and charges and you do not have to think about it. As a rural person who drives to Belfast and back, I charge in Belfast, possibly, if I need to, or, if I go to Dublin, I charge halfway up the motorway coming home, in order to get home. I do not charge three or four miles from my house. Rural chargers are still needed, because people travel to Enniskillen for holidays or whatever. They are the people we hear saying, "There's no chargers here".

Mr Boylan: The Chair is happy with that point.

Mr Anderson: I said it on purpose. [Laughter.]

A person from a rural area who is travelling to Belfast, for instance, will probably charge at work in Belfast or at a rapid charger on the way home.

Mr Henderson: Our focus is not off getting more rapid chargers installed around Northern Ireland. A 700% increase in the past two years is fantastic, but, if you look at the graph in the pack, you will see that it is still well below where it needs to be. As Mark said, the requirement to use those is misunderstood. They are for long journeys. If you are going to Dublin, Derry/Londonderry or Donegal, for instance, you might need to stop once. That is what they are used for; you do not need them in your local town. That gives us a laser focus on the people who do not have off-street parking, because they have no alternative but to use them. That is why we are focused on that element for cross-pavement and other solutions.

Mr McMurray: My ears pricked up at the price of diesel. I need an electric van now.

Mr Anderson: We have a good review on our website of a recent van for the weekend.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I have to say that not everybody goes to Enniskillen just for their holidays. [Laughter.]

Mr Boylan: Some people live there.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): The point is appreciated, though. We boast of having electric charging at this Building, and I know that it is well used. We have that facility and are proud to have it. It sends out a small signal that we want to see some movement towards EV charging.

We appreciate your time to the Committee. You have given some useful points to follow up on in relation to the action plan and the levelling up funding. It would be useful for the Committee to follow up on those. No doubt, we will hear from you again in the course of the mandate. Thank you for coming. We will be in touch.