The next item is the debate by individual Members under Standing Order 11.21(iv) and I call on Jenny Rathbone to move the motion. Jenny Rathbone.

Motion NDM6527 Jenny Rathbone, Suzy Davies, Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Dai Lloyd, David Melding, Eluned Morgan

Supported by Simon Thomas

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes that the speed of the revolution in transport technology challenges current planning assumptions and requires a major re-think in public policy and design.

2. Believes that transport manufacturers and their supply chains will need to adapt or die as the combustion engine is phased out within the next 20 years because of:

a) driverless vehicles, which will disrupt assumptions about private ownership of cars, urban town planning, managing road congestion and the role of buses to connect communities; and

b) electric vehicles, which require a more dispersed electricity generation and supply including charging points covering the whole of Wales;

3. Calls on the Welsh Government to outline the steps that it is taking to align policies with the pace of change and ensure all citizens will benefit, in line with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Llywydd. Chris Blake, who many of you will know as a non-executive member of Natural Resources Wales and a proponent in many guises of sustainable, renewable energy, has invested in an electric car, along with a wind turbine and solar panels on his house, to make sure that his vehicle is only powered by clean energy. But his frustration is that he cannot use this electric car to get to all parts of Wales. He, like other pioneers of electric cars, can get from Carmarthen to Nottingham or London and back in an electric car, but they cannot get to Gwynedd or Anglesey, simply because the electric charging points don’t exist.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

Many of us will be familiar with this argument; Simon Thomas also tells us about his pain that he can’t use an electric car to get from Aberystwyth to get round his region of Mid and West Wales. So, I was delighted to hear that there is a proposal in the budget for this year to invest £2 million in developing more electric charging points so that we aren’t just making them available on the M4 and the eastern parts of the A55. I’ve no doubt that Simon Thomas had something to do with this, but I think that this commitment by the Welsh Labour Government is just the beginning of how we see this transformation through, because we cannot see this as a challenge to build yet another power station the size of Hinkley Point, as suggested by the National Grid, who said that that was sufficient to satisfy peak demand in the evenings if electric vehicles take off and become the norm. We have to see this as an opportunity to disperse our electricity generation and supply, and electric charging points are an ideal way of kick-starting that process.

So, how are we going to do this? The renewable that we have in abundance is wind; we are the windiest country in Europe. So, instead of getting the Brigands Inn on the A470 to install an electric charging point hooked up to the grid, they could be generating their own wind and solar energy, just like Chris Blake is already doing. Indeed, if they do install an electric charging point using conventional energy from the grid, I submit that they will quickly lose their market advantage before too long, as cheaper electric charging points fuelled by renewables come along. This could provide a major boost for community energy schemes who no longer have to run the gauntlet of expensive connection costs to the grid if they have a steady income from electric vehicles needing to charge up both for local transport and for long-distance journeys. This will also then generate an additional opportunity for people to be able to generate their own energy for warming their homes.

But electric vehicle charging points are but one cog in the revolution required to deliver our more sustainable future. Last week, the World Solar Challenge, which took place in Australia, was won by a Dutch car solely powered by the sun. Even though we have less sun than in Australia, vehicles that are at least partly solar-powered are something we will need to consider too. Electric vehicles are not new to Wales. The milk float was produced in Merthyr from the 1930s up until the 1980s, and the Eco Travel Network already operates across the Brecon Beacons National Park, offering electric vehicle hire of their fleet of Renault Twizys. They’ve developed an informal 13 amp charging network with tourist businesses so visitors get an interesting choice of attractions to visit, activities to try, and places to eat and drink.

But electric vehicles are not just for individual or leisure use. They are one of the key ways we can clean up our public transport system, and this we must do because of our climate change obligations. The debate is not whether or how we will switch away from dirty diesel to clean public—it’s not whether we, but how we’re going to do this in our switch away from dirty diesel to clean public transport systems. We’ve already seen that London, Milton Keynes and Nottingham have all commissioned electric vehicles, and many of them are already in operation. Other cities will have to follow. So, the question is: can Wales build the vehicles of the future that are going to be needed, particularly for mass public transport, not least, I have to say, to capture the expertise we already have centred around the Ford engine plant in Bridgend and the Toyota hybrid engine plant on Deeside, whose current activities will cease as a result of the UK Government decision to phase out petrol and diesel combustion engines by 2040, and probably a lot earlier as a result of that? Can we build an alternative vehicle industry focused on zero-carbon ambitions to make sure we don’t lose the expertise we currently have in Bridgend and in Deeside? How can we, for example, take advantage of the production of lightweight electric London taxis, which is now happening in Caerphilly, to, for example, green our own taxi fleet?

Now, the alternative to electric vehicles is hydrogen. The hydrogen fuel cell was invented by William Grove from Swansea in the 1840s. Twelve years ago—. But we haven’t developed it, to date, properly. Twelve years ago, WalesOnline ran a story headlined ‘Hydrogen Valley to put Wales on Green Map’. The Welsh Development Agency, at that point, was setting out to develop a micro-economy in south Wales based around hydro technology. The then Minister for Economic Development and Transport, Andrew Davies, described hydrogen valley as a unique opportunity to use existing hydrogen infrastructure to harness the expertise in the private and the public sector. Within 10 years, he envisaged there would be hydrogen fuelling stations, zero-emission integrated transport networks, hydrogen-powered water taxis and hubs where HGVs can transfer goods onto electric vehicles for delivery.

The results so far are modest. The University of South Wales hydrogen centre in Baglan has developed Wales’s first hydrogen fuelling station using renewably produced hydrogen, but hydrogen refuelling stations are limited to two University of South Wales sites, in Baglan and at Pontypridd. They are working with a small company in Llandudno who plan to build hydrogen cars for leasing starting next year. But this is obviously not on the grand scale that we will need to do in the future.

My final point that we need to think about is the systems that are already in place for wireless communications between vehicles and the congestion systems that we need to manage. That is, they are already in place; we already can see them in operation when we look up how we’re going to get from A to B on Google. But, in the future, they will be used as a vehicle for managing driverless cars, and it seems to me absolutely vital that we fight to resist the privatisation of the 5G network, which will be the platform from which this can happen. This needs to be a public service, not a privatised service for profit that only those with the money can operate. So, that is a major thought I leave you with for now.

It’s a pleasure to take part in this individual Members debate. Tim Peake the astronaut, gazing at planet Earth from outer space, marvelled at the spectacular appearance of our planet. And in a world where we talk in millions of miles, billions of kilometres and light years away, he noted the spectacular appearance of our atmosphere, which is only 16 km high—a thin, bright veneer that needs protecting, that’s so vitally important. And it hit him at that time the fragility, potentially, of our existence. It’s a 16 km depth, this atmosphere that we live and breathe, only, which is how we come to this very necessary discussion on phasing out the traditional combustion engine, for all the reasons that Jenny’s already alluded to, and introducing electric cars, hydrogen cars, driverless automated cars, vans, buses and all the rest.

Because there’s a lot of huge innovation going on. In terms of electric vehicles, which, obviously, are already on our roads, we are seeing significant strides, with some cars surpassing 300 miles in range and producing 0 to 60 mph times to rival supercars. This increase in the numbers of electric cars needs to be planned for, as well as the use of hybrid cars and those powered by hydrogen fuel cells that, again, Jenny alluded to, from William Grove’s start with hydrogen cells and photovoltaic cells invented in Swansea back in Victorian times, used by NASA before now. We need to be using them far more on the ground as well, because those don’t require mains electricity, the hybrid cars or the hydrogen fuel cars. But planning for increased electricity generation and supply needs to happen now with the predicted increase in the peak time demand for electricity of between 15 per cent and 40 per cent. We need to be developing Welsh solutions to this electricity generation challenge. And, obviously, with tidal lagoons being obvious examples, that should be supported now.

In addition, there needs to be a national network of charging points for electric cars. We need to know what Government is doing in conjunction with industry to expand this network to meet predicted demand.

Will the Member give way?

Simon.

Thank you to the Member. Just on the point about a national network, I think it’s important to bear in mind that today, for example, Shell have announced that they’re going to install fast electric charging points in some of their forecourts. But they’re concentrated in the south-east of England, and this is why it’s important to have a national infrastructure here in Wales, so that places in Wales are not left out.

Exactly right, because we need to have that national network of charging points. Turning to driverless cars, which are one of the biggest technological breakthroughs since the assembly line, companies such as Tesla, Audi, Nissan and Google are spending millions to get driverless cars on the road. You simply climb aboard, set your destination and the electronics do the rest—and this is only a few years away. One of the biggest benefits that driverless cars will offer is mobility to those who currently cannot drive, with clear social benefits in tackling loneliness and isolation as well.

But I return to the fact that we need to plan for all this—how we pay for self-drive cars, buses, delivery vans and the rest. Yes, they should be a public service, I would contend—I agree with Jenny there. And exactly what role the public sector plays in developing a truly integrated transport network—. And what about all those narrow, twisting country lanes in Wales? A special challenge, indeed, for driverless vehicles. Well, not just driverless vehicles, but particularly a challenge for driverless vehicles.

So, to end, there is much to ponder, but the direction of travel, as it were, is clear: in order to protect that fragile 16 km depth of atmosphere that we all depend upon, support the motion. Diolch yn fawr.

It’s a pleasure to support this motion and I’m glad that the individual Members debates continue to bring really interesting ideas to the Assembly, and ideas that generally have cross-party support.

I think we’re all very much aware of the close links between high levels of congestion and air pollution, and I think that electric vehicles will offer a way to alleviate this issue. But, as Jenny has already outlined, the lack of infrastructure at the moment is really quite frustrating, though, I would say that, in the last election, I think, for the first time, I saw several charging points built in, naturally, to the infrastructure of new houses. Rather than a long cable leading to the back somewhere or through the garage, there are now obviously properly designed charging points at the front of some houses.

So, the world is changing and we need to see this progress very quickly. I think the public sector can take the lead, especially in terms of public transport, and I’d include in that encouraging taxis to move to electric vehicles. Now, that, obviously, will require the availability of charging points around the city, and also perhaps some other incentives. Also, I think, as urban areas restrict the use of private vehicles, especially if there’s just single occupancy, then we can see much more of the inner urban travel being conducted on electric vehicles. So, I think that’s an important area as well. But, unless you get the infrastructure right, you simply won’t be able to see this transformation. They’ve tried very hard—it was interesting to note—in Hong Kong. They’ve been really trying to have a shift there, with their green transport fund, but they’ve concluded that high production costs, limited service life, long charging times and low-energy density of e-vehicle batteries are the key constraints for electric vehicles to take up commercial transportation duties. So, it is quite obvious that we’ve got to have a holistic approach to sorting out the infrastructure and then providing whatever incentives are needed on top of that to see this modal shift, or at least the shift in the manner of the running of these vehicles. I think, if you look at Cardiff, Swansea and Newport in particular, the air quality is often poor, and if we want clean air zones in these cities, and I’m sure that that is something we need to demand, then we’re going to have to see this sort of shift.

Can I just talk a little bit about the integration of transport modes? Because, again, I think this is very important. Now, usually we hear that you need to get off a train and onto a bus or vice versa, and that’s very important, but I think the facilities for people who are perhaps driving part of their journey, perhaps to a satellite car park at the edge of a city, and then transferring to a bus or to a train, indeed, but also, perhaps, walking or cycling, and to have these various networks then connected to these satellite points—I think that is very, very important, especially if you’re making a slightly longer journey, perhaps from the Heads of the Valleys, and are driving into the edge of Newport of Cardiff or, indeed, Swansea, if you take the western Valleys. I think this offers a lot of opportunity as well, and I think we need to look at our infrastructure that is currently there and think about how that can be used more effectively.

I notice that the mayor of London’s draft transport strategy earlier this year did suggest that Oxford Street could be closed to domestic vehicles and made into a cycling and walking street only, and that’s the type of thinking we need. There are a lot of routes there currently; we don’t necessarily need to build new ones. I think a focus on walking, cycling and public transport in a more integrated way has a lot to offer, and then the private use of cars in areas that are likely to get less congested, so the periphery of the town and such—but being in a partnership with motorists so that we don’t just beat them down with lots of restrictions.

Can I finally say that the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, I think, is an ideal piece of legislation to try and co-ordinate these approaches? So, I think that will be a key test of the Act in the future. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.

I’d like to congratulate the AMs in whose names this debate is tabled today. For my contribution, I’d like to address my comments to the second part of the motion, dealing with electric vehicles. The number of electric and hybrid vehicles on Welsh roads has increased dramatically in recent years, with nearly a twenty-fivefold increase in the four years between 2012 and 2016. This is obviously something that we should welcome. We know that emissions from motor vehicles contribute to global warming and are linked to tens of thousands of deaths each year. However, to ensure greater take-up of electric vehicles, we need to ensure that the correct infrastructure is in place so they can be used in everyday life, and this is something that my colleague Jenny Rathbone has already mentioned.

I noticed with great interest the commitment in the budget a few weeks ago for £2 million for electric vehicle charging points. I think this is a really sensible step in making sure Wales can develop the network of supply points it needs, but we need to ensure a network not just of charging points, but of rapid charging points. These are those charging units that can provide an 80 per cent charge in around 30 minutes, as compared to those units that take three to four hours to fully recharge a vehicle. With the average range of an electric car being around 80 miles, for many journeys, users will need to stop and charge their vehicle up again, and it’s simply not feasible for us to have charging units where people would have to stop for three to four hours. These are the kinds of things that put people off owning electric vehicles, so it’s really important that we use this investment in getting the rapid charging points, rather than the conventional ones.

Outside of a dozen or so rapid charging points, which are largely limited to the M4 or the A55 corridors, this really is something that requires further development, and I would hope that the Welsh Government will engage with the passionate and committed electric vehicle community at an early stage to make the best decisions on spending this money correctly and efficiently. It is a basic point, but we must make sure that these charging facilities are located in the right places and that they’re accessible 24 hours a day, too.

In doing my research for today, I found the report from the low-carbon vehicle expert group produced for the previous Minister for Economy, Science and Transport to be particularly useful. The report offers sensible suggestions for how the Welsh Government can promote a rapid charging network across the public sector estate and better develop an LCV fleet of vehicles. It also notes the importance of promoting alternative fuel sources amongst public transport vehicles. As the report notes, the strength of Wales’s automotive base places us in a good position to develop as a centre of excellence for low-carbon vehicles, and this, in turn, offers new opportunities for us to stimulate growth and capitalise on its economic benefits. I commend this motion today.

Thanks to the various Members for bringing forward today’s debate. We do broadly support the motion, although there are some observations that do need to be made regarding the development of driverless and electric vehicles. Now, I take on board that we are going to progress with this technology, so the problems we have now may not be the problems of a few years’ time, but I do want to follow Vikki Howells’s lead in pointing out some of the problems that we have currently.

Regarding driverless cars, I’m not really sure if they are going to be a positive development, because it seems to me that there is a very real risk that if driverless cars did become a commercially viable product, you could end up with more cars on the road. Will you need a traditional licence to drive them? If not, you could have people who are too old to drive getting back into a car, as well as people who are too young. Now, as Dai Lloyd said, this could bring social benefits. However, we could have a huge increase in vehicles on the road, and the roads could end up being even more congested than they are now. We have to remember that every major improvement to the road system that we have ever had from the inception of the motorways in the 1950s onwards has led to more traffic congestion—

Will you give way?

Of course.

Thanks for giving way, Gareth. You made some interesting points there. There is, of course, a flip side to that: that if you have driverless cars that are communicating with each other via computer, Wi-Fi or whatever it is, you can actually have shorter stopping distances, because you’re not relying on human reaction, so you can get far more capacity out of the existing road network.

Yes. I’m aware of the concept, but what bothers me with that concept is the transitional period, when you have both driverless cars on the road and you have passenger-driven cars on the road. How will they interact with each other? I’m interested in what the implications are for congestion and other road factors in that interaction, but it’s good that you raise that issue.

The other issues relating to driverless cars: if it makes it easier for people to get into private vehicles to make a journey, this could have a negative impact on the use of public transport, and it is public transport that we are trying to encourage. What about its impact on active travel? Driverless cars could make it even easier for kids to get to school in a private car, since that car might not even have to be driven by time-pressured parents. So, I think that these are things that we do have to bear in mind as we go forward with considering driverless cars.

Electric cars is the other thing that we’ve been discussing, and I don’t want to rehash all of the very valid, practical points that Vikki Howells has just made. She mentioned the same measurements that I’ve seen quoted. She made the distinction between the two different types of charging points, and we do need the rapid charging points, but even then, at the moment, we’re talking about half an hour to recharge to 80 per cent. What does that compare with in terms of filling up a tank of petrol? A few minutes. So, there is still a big difference, and it will render many journeys unviable in a certain time frame, which currently you can undertake.

There are other issues as well relating to electric cars. How are we going to dispose of all the batteries after we’ve used them and where do the parts come from to make them in the first place? Given that two of the parts that are used are lithium, some of which is sourced from Zimbabwe, and cobalt, some of which comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this may raise issues of working conditions in the mines in those countries.

Another problem is that electric vehicles are also very quiet; you can’t hear them coming. So, one thing we could get, if we have more electric cars on the road, is more fatalities involving pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. So, I think, although I agree with the broad thrust of your motion, and it’s something that we do need to investigate, I think we have to bear in mind we are entering unchartered waters and there could be pitfalls ahead. Thank you.

I’ll make a short contribution. I want to do that because I feel genuinely passionate about this particular issue. I like cars. I have always liked cars. I used to go to the motor shows when I was a young boy with my parents. I consider cars to be works of art. One can look at a car from any period and learn a lot about that period from the car in front of you. Yes, the cars on our roads in Wales in the future will be a sign of what the fashions and ways of life in Wales will be in future.

My interest in cars is in the way that they drive and the way that they’re driven, which has also followed fashion and trends globally. We know already that driving has changed over the years as the aspirations and expectations of people have changed. But people’s practices with regard to their choice of car can be changed as well, and there are a number of influences that can come to bear here: there are environmental concerns, and that is becoming clearer; the car’s performance; and also the cost.

In Wales now, we’re perhaps at the beginning of this next major change with regard to the way that cars are driven, which is the change to electric cars, but it’s a gradual change and I don’t see the genuine incentive there to accelerate that change. Point 1 in the motion notes the speed of the revolution, but the Government’s strategy and public policy don’t come anywhere near catching up with the technological revolution that there’s been.

I genuinely believe that there’s an opportunity here in Wales to make a name for ourselves in this area and by doing that to accelerate and drive change and the practices of users and consumers in Wales. So, why don’t we change planning rules for new homes to make it compulsory to set those charging points outside them? Where’s the strategy across the public sector to install those charging points? Do we have to have charging points in surgeries or twenty-first century schools? We need to take that action. Where are the regulations to make it compulsory for the fleet of public sector vehicles in councils and the NHS to be zero-carbon-emission vehicles or electric vehicles? One manager in the NHS in my constituency has been trying to ensure that district nurses and school nurses can have electric vehicles for their visits, but has failed because the contract that the NHS had was with a company that couldn’t provide electric vehicles. This is a change that could be made through policy change.

What about a commercial network that’s marketed with regard to its tourist potential, to ensure that when you’re coming to Wales your hotels and attractions will be places where you can charge your car? I don’t know if the tactic is to let things happen organically, leaving things to chance, but you only have to look at Tesla maps of charging points across Europe to see that Wales is being left behind here. I’m talking about swift charging points; they’re only available on the M4 and the A55. I genuinely want to have an electric car, but I can’t overcome the barriers yet in a way that makes sense economically at present.

Fel rhywun sy’n ddiedifar am fy hoffter o’r car modur am ei rinweddau artistig a mecanyddol a thechnolegol—a chyn i mi gael fy meirniadu, rwyf mor awyddus â neb i sicrhau bod cynifer o bobl â phosibl yn gadael eu ceir modur ar ôl ac yn defnyddio trafnidiaeth gyhoeddus. Ond fel rhywun sy’n hoff o geir, rwyf am i Gymru groesawu a chyflymu chwyldro’r cerbyd trydan, a normaleiddio cerbydau trydan. Felly, gadewch inni geisio datblygu enw da i Gymru fel gwlad sy’n croesawu cerbydau trydan. A chan wybod nad yw buddsoddiad a newid diwylliant yn digwydd dros nos, rwy’n meddwl y gallai hyd yn oed datganiad o fwriad go iawn, datganiad o uchelgais i ddatblygu’r enw da hwnnw, fod yn ffordd dda o gael pethau i symud ar hyn.

Yn olaf, roeddwn yn trafod yn ddiweddar gyda rhywun brwdfrydig ynglŷn â cherbydau trydan yn fy etholaeth sydd, fel y mae’n digwydd, wedi gosod gwefrydd foltedd uchel yn ei fusnes yn Llangefni oherwydd prinder pwyntiau gwefru mewn mannau eraill. Dywedais, ‘Rwyf am i Gymru wneud mwy na dilyn eraill ar hyn.’ Ei ymateb: ‘Ar hyn o bryd, nid ydym hyd yn oed yn dilyn; rydym yn edrych ar ein traed ac yn troi yn ein hunfan’, ac mae’n rhaid inni symud ymlaen o hynny.

Thank you very much for taking part in this debate.

Rwy’n falch o fod wedi cael y cyfle hwn. Rwy’n ddiolchgar i’r rhai sydd wedi cyflwyno’r cynnig hwn heddiw, a chan lawn fwriadu’r gair mwys, gadewch i ni ddefnyddio’r ddadl hon i danio’r Llywodraeth i gyflwyno gweledigaeth gadarnhaol ar gyfer cerbydau trydan i Gymru.

Thank you. I call on the Minister for Skills and Science, Julie James.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I, too, add my thanks to the Members who tabled this very important debate and for all the thoughtful contributions from all Members today in the Chamber? I, too, am a bit of a car fan. Everybody who knows me at all well knows that I restore old Minis by way of relaxation at weekends. And I also feel that Wales should be on the crest of the wave, whatever analogy you want, to take this forward.

I feel obliged, I’m afraid, to address some of Gareth Bennett’s somewhat downbeat contribution with a well-known anecdote from the introduction of motor vehicles in the first place, where many countries across Europe embraced the motor vehicle, but Britain put in place legislation to make a man with a red flag walk in front of them. Consequently, almost all of the large, successful automotive firms of the twentieth century were in Germany and France, whereas we lagged behind terribly. The lesson of the Luddites is clear: you cannot hold back the tide of technology; you can only embrace it and mould it to your own ambition. And that is very much what we want to do here in Wales as part of our Government’s strategy to embrace and involve ourselves in this very welcome, in my view, change as the technology advances.

We’ll do that by having a tripod structure to stand on. And that is by having policy that embraces the change and is fleet of foot, by having infrastructure policy to go with that overarching policy that allows us to mould our investment to make sure that the new requirements for that infrastructure are in place, and also that we have a skills policy that produces the people necessary to produce both the infrastructure and, indeed, the vehicles and so on that travel on that infrastructure into the future. And there’s absolutely no reason at all why Wales couldn’t be at the forefront of all of those things.

The need for action is extremely clear, not only because the technology is upon us whether we like it or not—indeed, I hope Members will see that I do like it very much—but also because, actually, it allows us to set a clear pathway for Wales in terms of decarbonisation and very seriously good renewable energy generation at the same time.

We have to be ahead of this game. We have to understand intelligent transport systems, the integration of information—

Will you give way?

Certainly.

Thanks for giving way, Julie. You’ve been extremely good and diligent at visiting broadband notspots across my constituency and across deepest, darkest Wales over the last few months. Are you really willing to take this on? You might get invited to all sorts of parts of Wales to check electric charging point notspots as well. [Laughter.]

I’m looking forward to it already. [Laughter.] Well, the reason I’ve been visiting all of those places is because I want to make sure that we are embracing the technology as it comes upon us.

As I was about to say, understanding intelligent transport systems, the integration of information and communication technology with transport infrastructure, vehicles and users is one of these important challenges. So, as we adopt these new technologies—low emission, connected autonomous vehicles and so on—we need to make sure both our companies in Wales and our infrastructure are in a position to take advantage of it. We’ve got a whole series of manufacturers already interested in coming to Wales or who are already in Wales and are interested in adapting their practice to embrace this, and that’s part of the reason why we’re going to invest £100 million to invest in the automotive park in Blaenau Gwent. That will—I won’t rehearse the metrics for that, because you’re all aware of them.

I recently attended a dinner after Digital 2017 with a series of automotive and digital entrepreneurs with a view to getting them together to talk about their ideas. That was a very instructive dinner, because it really does make you understand some of the integration pieces for this. So, we have to integrate our role in battery development and manufacturing, and electric charging points and their distribution across Wales—fast electric charging points; I completely take that point. We have to have low-volume, special purpose electric vehicle manufacturing, composite manufacturing, we need to have highly competitive, independent companies in Wales, but we have to have a good public infrastructure for them to be able to use it, both for the test beds of the next couple of years, and then for the cars of the future, as that rolls out.

I think it’s worth having a look for a minute at just a few of the things that we will need to discuss along this way. Members will know that we recently published a mobile action plan, which talks about readiness, amongst other things, for testing of fifth generation and other innovative solutions in Wales. I’d like Members to just apply their minds a little bit to how an autonomous vehicle might travel along a road. That road will be wired. It will have a fibre broadband tetrabyte pipe running along it, and it will have nodes every so often to talk to the vehicles above it. But the car won’t stick a spike into the road. It will have to have some kind of spectrum—Wi-Fi or radio spectrum—to talk to that road, and to the car in front of it. If the Government sells the 5G radio spectrum, which is a finite resource—bear in mind it’s not an infinite thing—in the way that it sold other spectrum, then what we will have, effectively, is equivalent to land banking. So, Members will be very aware that fourth generation is not available right across Wales, but 4G has been sold, and the companies that own it are simply not utilising it in areas that are not commercially viable. We call on the UK Government to seriously think about the way that it approaches the next spectrum sales, not as cash cows, but as ways of making sure that this infrastructure can be used productively to make this technology happen properly. So, for example, I personally would not want to be driving along in an autonomous vehicle in the middle of Powys only to find that my mobile connection cuts off because a private sector company has done a nefarious deal someplace else in the world and gone bankrupt. I’d quite like that to be public infrastructure, which I need to be reliable and resilient. So, I think these things really do need to be thought through as we move forward into the future. So, I thought it was worth pointing that out.

At the same time, we need to be embracing, for example, battery and technology change, so that the range gets bigger and better, and we address some of the issues that Gareth Bennett raised around the production of rare materials and so on. Recently, I had the real pleasure to attend a catalysis cutting-edge research centre at Cardiff University to look at some of the experimentation that’s going on there in developing different fuel cells and using different catalysts to produce different types of fuel technology. I confess that, although I understood what I was being told at the time, I’m not too sure I could reproduce it now in all of its chemical technicolour glory. But it was very impressive indeed, and of course the Government has put an enormous amount of resource into knowledge transfer partnerships and the commercialisation of such resource with appropriate private and public sector companies around that research, to make sure that the commercialisation for that kind of thing happens here in Wales. I’m going to run out of time—otherwise I’d read you a whole long list of companies that are very much part of that.

As Vikki Howells pointed out, we have provided £2 million in the budget to help secure a network of charging points, and in addition, we are putting 10 fast-charging points in Welsh Government offices, to serve employees and visitors as a network, as we roll it out. We’re liaising with the UK Office of Low Emission Vehicles, administering the UK funding on the potential for running roadshow-type events in Wales for the public and private sectors, and my innovation team has run several events in partnership with Innovate UK and the Knowledge Transfer Network on opportunities for funding integrated transport systems as part of our infrastructure, connected autonomous systems and accelerating innovation in rail systems.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I have another 12 or so pages about all of the things we could do in rail and electric—

No, I don’t think so. [Laughter.]

[Continues.]—that I won’t indulge myself in reading through. But I do think it’s worth—and you’ll forgive me for doing so—mentioning the need for advancing policy thinking at all levels of government in the UK. The issue about the generation of electricity in order to support these new technologies is a big one. So, I’m going to take this opportunity, unashamedly, to ask the UK Government to make the decision on the Swansea tidal lagoon in the way it should be made—as we know everybody in Wales wants it to be made, because I think it’s not really acceptable that they drag their feet on that—and to abhor the lack of electrification of the mainline railway down into Swansea, not least because we need the infrastructure for that to roll out some of the other programmes. There are many things that we can do. We’ve been clear from the outset that we want integrated transport systems in Wales to bring communities closer, to link our people with jobs, leisure and tourism opportunities, and to develop our economy. But more than anything else, we want to ride the crest of this wave, embrace it, and make it Wales’s contribution to the future as we go forward. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you very much. I call on Eluned Morgan to reply to the debate.

Diolch yn fawr. Can I thank Jenny Rathbone and everybody else who sponsored this debate, because I think it’s really important that we start to look to the future? When we are developing a new economic strategy, this has got to be a fundamental part of it, and I’m really pleased that Julie James is the person replying to this as she has a real understanding of this technology and the need and the potential of this changing the way that we live. I don’t see it as something negative, I see it as really giving new opportunities in particular to people living in rural Wales. I know that General Motors this week announced that it would be test driving self-driving vehicles in New York city. So, the point is: this is happening now, this is not a revolution that’s going to happen in the future, this is not science fiction for our grandchildren—this is happening now and we need to catch up, and we need to create the infrastructure and to put that in place. In fact, Elon Musk, who’s the guru of this new technology, has said he wants to have a fully autonomous vehicle on the road by 2018: that’s next year. That’s a commercial vehicle. So, things are changing: I’ve just come back from Brussels yesterday, and you could see cars being charged on the street in Brussels. Other people are doing it, we need to catch up.

It’s predicted that, in time, this new technology will lead to a 90 per cent reduction in accidents, a 40 per cent reduction in congestion, an 80 per cent reduction in emissions, and 50 per cent reduction in parking space saved. And I think it’s absolutely right that we shouldn’t just restrict this, as Jenny said, to electric vehicles. Hydrogen vehicles also have an opportunity to contribute to this. I know that in my constituency, in Llandrindod Wells, the Riversimple car—they are just about to start a new pilot that is going to be happening from Abergavenny. So, this is happening—we are a part of this, but we do need to go further.

One of the most interesting things for me is that, actually, the potential for new car ownership is likely to change. Now, KPMG has suggested that 59 per cent of industry bosses believe that more than half of all car owners today will no longer want to own a car by 2025: that’s eight years from now. Well, I don’t know about you lot, but that means I’ve bought my last car. [Laughter.] So, I think it’s really important for us to understand that this circular economy, that the new way of owning cars is actually also going to change the way we have our relationship with the way we travel around. And, of course, there will be casualties. There will be casualties: taxi drivers are probably not very happy about this; the people who build combustion engines are probably not very excited about this. But that’s why we have to move with it and create the new jobs. I’m not one of the doom-mongers. I don’t think that we can stick the finger in the dyke. I think it’s really important that we embrace it and we run with it.

We have to take advantage of those economic opportunities. The Boston Consulting Group says that this market is going to be worth $77 billion by 2035. Now, even if we had a fraction of that in Wales that would be a great step. I really hope that the Minister and the Cabinet Secretary, when they’re developing this new economic strategy, will be thinking—as I’m sure they are—beyond the here and now. It’s given me great heart to listen to Julie, to know that, actually, they have got their eye on this, there is potential for it, but also to listen to, actually, the real problems that we have. You know, if we do have this 5G Wi-Fi going out to the commercial sector, not having any control on it, then that, potentially, could really freeze up the system in some areas. I think it’s important also—. We heard about planning—lots of people talked about planning—and I think Rhun was absolutely right to mention not just the infrastructure charging system that Vikki suggested is really important—that rapid charging system. There’s also the destination charging. You can drive to somewhere and leave it charging overnight. We need to make sure that can happen, and it is happening in some places in Wales already. But I think there is an opportunity for us to think. And I do hope that we’ll be building this into things when we’re assessing what the impact’s going to be if we do go ahead with changing the M4, and what the impact’s going to be when we are redesigning our towns and cities. All of these things need to be built in to that planning thinking now, as Rhun suggested.

I know that many people in this Chamber are committed to improving public transport in Wales, and I would ask that people give particular thought to how this technology could be really beneficial in parts of rural Wales, where we do need things to be a little bit more flexible, where we can’t have big buses and things in the same way as you do in cities. And the potential there, I think, in particular for helping an ageing population is really great and, again, we need to be thinking about that.

Dai Lloyd talked about the difficulty with narrow country lanes. Well, one of the things that I’ve learned from talking to Tesla is that you have to paint white stripes at the edge of roads, but in half of our rural areas there are no white stripes for these autonomous vehicles to read. So, again, what are local authorities doing? Are they actually writing that into their economic strategies?

So, we do need to think about how we’re going to do this, we do need to think about how we can adapt our grids—not just the large infrastructure grids, but could we have more local grids? Can we do more with renewable energy, which is absolutely crucial? We simply won’t be able to continue if we have this revolution to electric vehicles with the power infrastructure that we have now. So, let’s remember that this electric vehicle revolution is upon us. I think we need to move really fast to make sure we’re not left behind, and I do hope that we can lead with this technology and embrace this technology, because I think it’s a real opportunity for us in Wales to be an innovator and to lead.

Diolch yn fawr ichi am drafod.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.