broadgage: 
It will happen when the electric van can be purchased on credit, and when the repayments are less than the running costs of a petrol or diesel vehicle.

As a rough guess, I would say that the cost/mile probably becomes cheaper with an EV around 20,000 miles/year. That's a lot for a private motorist, but not for a business user.

Of course it may all change when the tax benefits of running on leccy start to be adjusted.

I'm actually getting bored with this ev and all electric nonsense. It is not possible to achieve net zero and is daft to think it is a worthy cause.

Even if you don't believe in anthropogenic climate change, fossil fuels are a finite resource: so at some point they will run out and the world will have to go carbon neutral or return to the stone age. You can of course have a lively debate as to when exactly this will happen, but known world gas reserves are for about 50 years at the current consumption rate (and the rate of discovery of new reserves has been dropping for a long time).

Two close friends of mine are giving birth in the next couple of months; those newborns could live to see gas run out world-wide.

Of course there's a lot more coal left than gas.

Talking to a person today  in a car  park flogging Telsa cars  300 mile range (made in China) nice job  and the cars and well finished, 45k or so price range. He said about 25 hours or so  for a full charge cost £7 but  off peak cost about £5. During our chat I asked how the Government would deal with the loss of Vat from petrol diesel , thinks there will be a extra vat on car charging only the electricity used.
Who will benfit from extra electricity usage, Mostly China and EU of course as UK has flogged nearly all power stations and wind farms to oversees owners. 
Take for example Northern Ireland all the power stations and wind farms are fowerign owned so they will benfit Ireland's ESB buys NIE for £1.2bn,Published21 December 2010.
I see the Government is going to make it mandotry for EV chargers to be fitted to all new builds houses. Most of the new builds now are social housing (even on todays news) Climate change: Wales set to build 20,000 low-carbon social Housing'.  Anyhow these timber two story houses with single brick skin on the outside look  terrible, and where I live due to timber shortage will now double the price of construction.
I think the original heading of this thread is correct EV, as I sometimes used ev which usage by the old BSI was electron volt like this eV  (American usage e.v) Abbreviations should be written in lower case unless the term abbreviated is a proper noun. And look at our own silly abbreviation for IET the E now  like three fallen telegraph poles.
I never seen how many cars as there is now no matter where you someone is following you and if the car behind turns off another car takes over so all these millions , billions of cars have to change to electric in the next few years, it must be a scare tactic to make you buy one now.
This is only a frendly chat so carry on with the technical stuff,
regards 
jcm. 
 

All this talk of reversing global warming reminds me of King Cnut. The modern interpretation of failing to hold back the tides is that he was powerless when it came to God's creation.

But on the other hand, modern Dutch engineers seem to have had rather more success at holding the North Sea back… 

   - Andy.

AJJewsbury: 
 

Don't forget that there are many facets to transport policy … in my local CA (and I suspect others are similar), the policy for several years now has included things like:

• Planning changes so that housing/shops/jobs/facilities etc. are placed closer together so much more daily activity can be achieved without needing vehicles. (Probably the least well implemented so far and probably the most long-term - but still on the cards and likely to carry much more weight in future)
• Discouraginging private car use for short/local journeys and encourage ‘active’ travel (walking/cycling) and public transport - e.g. by reallocating road space to public transport/cyclists/pedestrians.
• Attempting to improve public transport (the new regional mayors are now starting to get powers to make very significant changes to the local transport systems after decades of central government rules that set more store on competition between private companies than providing an integrated transport system, so expect much more significant changes in the future)
• Converting the remaining vehicles to low/zero emission

 

There are lots of drivers for such policies - not just CO2 emissions, but also road safety, local air quality, congestion/economics, population health/exercise levels, quality of community spaces, social inclusion, and so on - but they all point to needing far fewer private cars in the future and those having lower milage.

   - Andy.

Err, well, I use feet, bike, motorcycle and van… The biggest modal change, or additional facilities, I've seen in the last ten years (here in Worthing) is that cars and vans are now entitled to park on the pavement/sidewalk. Not sure how it helps?