Boris Johnson’s deputy Kit Malthouse slams support for electric cars
Boris Johnson’s deputy Kit Malthouse is battling against fellow politicians to drive hydrogen as the clean fuel source of the future, describing battery-powered vehicles as “a temporary technology”.
Speaking at Canaccord Genuity’s Hydrogen – The New Energy Landscape conference in London yesterday, Malthouse, deputy mayor for business and enterprise, told attendees that uptake of hydrogen-fuelled vehicles would be “much better” than it was for electric vehicles.
However, he said the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) was “obsessed” with wind power and other politicians “aren’t interested” in hydrogen.
A spokeswoman for DECC said this was “nonsense”.
Malthouse said that while the Mayor’s office had encouraged use of electric cars, “unfortunately, Londoners don’t seem to want to use them”.
Recent figures uncovered in a freedom of information request made by the Liberal Democrats show that 68 per cent of charging points were not used at all between April and June 2014.