Meeting of the Parliament 10 March 2016
I am very pleased that my motion has received cross-party support and I thank all the members who backed it. That cross-party support highlights the fact that Parliament recognises Scotland’s role in reducing global warming and the importance of electric car travel in reducing our nation’s carbon footprint.
As members will know, in December I leased a Nissan Leaf electric car, which has a real winter range of nearly 90 miles in mountainous terrain. I have been using it to travel around my constituency of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, which is not exactly small, and I have used it to travel down to Edinburgh a couple of times. Some people may have it in their heads that electric car travel is only for short journeys or use on small islands, but I have travelled from Inverness to Edinburgh via Fort William—a journey of 200 miles—with only three stops, which could have been two stops if there was a rapid charge point at Callander.
That brings me to my first point. There are not enough rapid charge points, particularly in the Highlands and in rural areas. Rapid charge points enable electric cars to get an 80 per cent boost in half an hour. There are fast charge points, but they take considerably longer. The lack of rapid charge points is off-putting to those who might otherwise be interested in purchasing an electric car for longer journeys.