Electric vehicles make up just one per cent of Department for Transport fleet

Electric vehicles make up a mere one per cent of the Department for Transport’s (DfT) fleet, it has been revealed.

The DfT runs a fleet of 1,860 vehicles, of which only 22 are fully electric, while 134 are hybrids, 43 are petrol and 1,326 are diesel - the other 335 vehicles are described as being motorbikes and specialist LCVs - light commercial vehicles, such as vans.

The Government has previously said that all its ministerial cars will be fully electric by 2030, with at least a quarter of the total fleet being made up of EVs by 2022. The DfT said it had detailed guidance to all other departments on how to transition to zero-emission fleets, but this data - which comes from a Freedom of Information (FoI) investigation conducted by Air Quality News - calls its own progress into question.

In its FoI response, the DfT referred to all of its electrified vehicles as being ultra-low emission, even though this category included a number of mild hybrids, which cannot be driven using electric power alone, while plug-in hybrids only have a very limited electric range and still rely primarily on an internal combustion engine.

Greg Archer, UK director of the European think tank Transport & Environment, told Air Quality News that the DfT had made “pathetic progress”.

“There is a mountain to climb to meet the aspiration that a quarter of cars should be electric by 2022,” he commented. “The department is even trying to mask its failure by wrongly counting mild hybrid cars as ultra-low emission vehicles. The DfT should lead by example and only operate zero-emission vehicles by 2025.

“Five years after the Dieselgate scandal and over 70 per cent of the vehicles operated by DfT and its agencies are diesel.”

He added: “It is time for a complete overhaul of the department’s procurement practices; they should be leading the shift to clean vehicles, not hanging on to the past.”

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