Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, or ‘FUD’ as it has become affectionately known, keeps coming up when I talk to people about electric cars, rippling through society like an uncontrollable tsunami.
Tales of woeful range anxiety, the fear of lights going out across the country as we all plug in at exactly teatime every single day of the week to charge our cars, the worry of battery life and the state of the UK’s charging infrastructure. These are just a few hot topics that I and many others work hard to combat, or at least bring the voice of balance and reason to, as best we can, to as many people as we can.
I’ve been advocating for electric car uptake for almost a decade, ever since my first test drive in a Nissan LEAF in 2012, when I was blown away by the drive experience. Since then I’ve immersed myself in both the electric car community and industry. For us relatively old timers familiar with the experience of living with and charging our electric cars, I think it’s sometimes easy to forget that for the vast majority of people, electric cars are a new and untried technology. Everyone is at varying stages of interest and engagement. Many people may still not realise that from 2030 we will no longer be able to buy a new petrol or diesel car or light van. There is understandable push back on this from some quarters, and an element of mistrust (think the push to diesel a few years ago and what happened there).
For me personally, I am driven by the need to clean up our local air quality. It’s an often-touted fact that 40,000 people die too soon every year in the UK due to air pollution, with traffic emissions being ONE OF the largest contributors behind wood burning. I read recently that 3.1 million children walk to school every day, breathing in toxic air. This is driver enough for me to accelerate uptake of zero tailpipe emission transport as quickly as possible.
And this is why I’m so excited to be heading up communications for ElectriX, powered by LV= General Insurance. ElectriX takes drivers on a journey of electric car discovery, from helping people decide on whether an electric car is right for them, through to understanding how to charge an electric car, and what it will cost to own and run one.
ElectriX debuted at Fully Charged OUTSIDE in September, to rapturous applause. Well, we like to think so anyway. It’s a source of information and experience for anyone who is thinking about making the switch to an electric car. We’re planning to put the spark into driving electric, and take the hassle out of electric car ownership. We’re giving drivers thinking about making the switch access to useful information, products and services; we’re demystifying some of the common jargon used and acting as a source of truth when it comes to zero tailpipe emission driving – in effect, we’re wiping away the FUD!
The ElectriX website is just the start. Watch this electric car-shaped space.
ElectriX will help meet customer’s electric car needs at every point of their journey. Take our electric car survey here, and if you have any thoughts or comments about ElectriX, we’d love to hear from you. Please email us at electrix@lv.co.uk.
Website: www.lvelectrix.co.uk and follow us on Twitter @LVElectriX
About the author
Gill has over 20 years’ experience across sustainable energy, utility, and environmental technologies sectors, including eight years working on electric vehicle grid integration projects. She is now Head of EV at LV= General Insurance. A regular speaker and panellist on electric vehicles and data-driven transition to a low carbon, sustainable world, Gill has been a keen advocate for the uptake of electric vehicles since 2012. In February 2019, Gill founded EVclicks – a free online EV image library for use by schools, communities, projects and businesses in aid of the transition to zero emission transport (www.evclicks.co.uk). She is also an avid runner, and proud Mum to two young children. Gill was also a founding board member of Electric Vehicle Association (EVA) England, offering a voice to EV drivers in England.
