23 January 2024
A membership or special interest group like EVA England drafts manifestos before a general election to articulate its goals, values, and priorities.
This document will serve as a clear expression of our stance on key issues, and help align not just our members, but EV drivers as a whole with a shared vision.
Additionally, it will provide us with a basis for engaging with political candidates, influencing their party manifestos, and ultimately work towards policies favourable to a quicker, easier and fairer transition away from petrol and diesel cars.
Ultimately, we want our drivers’ manifesto to be reflective of members’ views, although we are planning to have three distinct themes which we have gained from the responses to the Great EV Charging Survey we ran last summer.
The three clear themes coming from the survey were:
Starting at the end of the month, we will be running a policy workshop on each of these themes, and already have some ideas on what policies we can ask for, but look forward to hearing from members about what policy ideas they have.
Want to get involved and give your input on our Drivers’ Manifesto? Make sure to join EVA England today so that you can join other EV drivers in advocating to make EVs viable for everyone
We have seen an awful lot of negativity in the past year from some newspapers, coupled with a proactive campaign against EVs coming from those interests who gain from delaying the transition. However, we found from our survey that owning an EV is by no means the political dividing line some would have you think.
Overall, for those responding to our survey, 21% support Labour, Prefer not to answer 18%, Neutral or no political views 17%, Green 16%, Conservative 12% and Liberal Democrats 12%. While the Green Party are obviously overly represented, along with Lib Dems, it is by no means as warped as some may think, with the levels of support for Tory and Labour broadly representative of their current standings in the polls.
It is interesting though to see what differences there are between the two major parties, as well as where there is broad agreement.
There was a significant difference regarding the big EV policy issue of last year (the introduction of the ZEV Mandate), with 90% of Labour supporters backing the policy, compared to ‘only’ 76% of Conservative supporting EV drivers. Yet with three in four Tories supporting the policy, it is hardly unpopular.
However, the biggest difference we found was is in those supporting the actions of Just Stop Oil. With just over 6% of Conservatives supporting JSO, compared to 46% of Labour Supporters. It is worth noting that 50% of EV drivers do not support JSO, with only 1 in 3 backing their actions.
The area of biggest agreement came from removing VAT on public charging, with broad base support across all parties – 72% support from Conservatives and 78% from Labour.
It is probably unsurprising that Labour supporters are more in favour of reintroducing grants, both for the purchase of EVs and the installing of home chargers, yet even within Tories there was a strong majority in favour.
One final finding is the support for nationalising public transport and energy companies, which splits down predicable ideological dividing lines. And while these policies are outside the purview of EVA England, it demonstrated a pleasing correlation with what we expected, and gave us confidence that the survey respondents were still paying attention and being truthful in their political views!
EVA England is committed to empowering its members to advocate for clean, zero-emission transportation. This is even more important as we approach a General Election.
Our tools, such as our Powering Up policy report and the Constituency EV Map, are just the beginning of our efforts to make EVs viable for everyone. We believe that everyone deserves access to clean transportation, regardless of their income or postcode, and we want our EV Drivers’ Manifesto to reflect that.
Please spread the word and share our resources on social media, with your friends and family, and at community events. And if you’re not a member yet, make sure to join EVA England so that together we can make our voices heard.