Green number plates to identify electric cars

Earlier this week Mel Creedy from the DriveElectric team spoke to ITV reporter Chris Choi in Nottingham about plans to give electric cars green number plates.

Drivers of zero-emission cars could be given green number plates to help encourage electric vehicle (EV) adoption by raising public awareness of EVs, and by making it possible for local authorities to offer incentives to zero-emission vehicle drivers such as cheaper parking and access to bus lanes.

Green plates could encourage EV adoption in Nottingham

An incentive scheme for electric car drivers would make sense in an EV friendly city like Nottingham where the number of electric cars on the roads has doubled in the last 2 years. Incidentally we have been working on a project with Nottingham City Council and the Go Ultra Low Nottingham team to help business-owners switch to EVs since 2017. (Though we definitely can’t take all the credit for doubling the city’s EV population in that time!)

The plan so far

The Department for Transport [DfT] has launched a consultation on their plans to give special licence plates to cars which conform to the ‘highest environmental standards’.

We believe these plans will most likely exclude plug-in hybrid cars, which have a petrol engine and a smaller electric battery, and in our opinion are not as energy efficient as pure electric vehicles. Several design options for the green license plates have been proposed for consideration.

The measure is part of the Government’s £1.5 billion strategy to clean up road transport.