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News and Comment February 2020

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6 February (Part 1) - Another thing that’s Bonkers

You can’t say you weren’t warned, I am going to go off on one about the Government’s new policy on electric cars.

I love mine, no way would I want to drive anything else. I love the way it sails along with just a murmur from the tyres and the joy of having continuous power on tap instantly with no messing around with gears, manual or auto. All of it there from a standstill with no revving of an engine. I like it being an anonymous SUV which does not stand out in the crowd as would a Tesla. I do not regret emptying the piggy bank for it 18 months ago, not one bit.

Yesterday I picked up my Daily Telegraph and found the front page, a handful of inside pages and the Business Section (one Tesla Share is now priced at £5,400!) devoted to the Government’s decision to ban the sale of petrol, diesel and hybrid cars by 2035. I think they may have gone off their collective rockers.

It’s true that I don’t like hybrids and several European countries (both in and outside of the EU) have banned Toyota’s outrageous advertisements. No hybrid car qualifies for the Government subsidy - which will likely go at the next budget - because none meet the minimum electric distance requirement. It is 70 miles.

I know of a rural doctor who drives a hybrid just a few miles around his surgery each day and charges it mainly from his solar panels. His driving needs are met by a plug-in hybrid but most are not. How often have you been on a hybrid bus which pulls away from the stop silently and heard the engine cut in seconds later? What is the point of lugging around a heavy battery and motor that is not used for most of the time? Statistics show the majority of plug-in hybrids are never charged

The Government is probably right to say fully battery powered vehicles (BEV) is the way forward, but by 2035? Cloud Cuckoo Land most likely.

In Norway more than 50% of new car purchases are already fully electric. Look at what the Norwegian Government did to achieve that and then look closer to home and you will find the exact opposite.

When I bought my BEV there were not many to choose from. The choice is not much better now. Mine came with a large battery. In good conditions I have done 320 miles on a single charge although belt it down the motorway into a ferocious head wind as I did last weekend and see that knocked down to not much over 250. In practice less because no one wants to empty the battery completely.

Newer cheaper cars don’t get near to that. I have a 400 mile return trip to do soon and I am planning where best to stop to charge just once. Not much fun in a car with much lower range which has to stop three times. Will the average non-enthusiast want the hassle?

On the other hand the fastest systems being rolled out in the USA will pump in 250 miles of electric range in 15 minutes which is much more attractive.

There are at the moment plenty of chargers overall although there are too many localities where they are few and far between and the Motorway Services are very poorly equipped, Tesla specific units excepted. 2010 technology by Ecotricity which doesn’t always work and not at all on some makes of cars.
Charging Hub National GridWhat is needed is not just the one or two units that might be found on or near a Motorway, we need what is being called a Charging Hub. Apart from Tesla specific units there is barely a handful of them in the country. Milton Keynes, Dundee, recently Stratford and that’s about it.

Contrast this one soon to open in Braintree, Essex with Bexley’s pathetic efforts.

If units like that do not start springing up everywhere very soon there will be problems from the growing band of BEV drivers. It is perhaps fortunate that the number is growing very slowly although it was three times greater in January 2020 than in January 2019.

Old school car manufacturers can make a fat profit from their tried and tested technology and not much if anything from electric vehicles. They won’t be encouraging BEV sales when they have traditional motor cars sitting on their forecourts and a shortage of BEVs. The waiting list has been frequently best part of a year although some might be nearer three months. Mine made in South Korea is now also being manufactured in Czechoslovakia to better meet demand.

Where will the electricity come from the sceptics ask? Renewables mainly, the grid is already heading in that direction. The engineers at National Grid don’t think there will be a problem - see Tweet. Others say the batteries will fail and present a recycling problem. They are all being recycled now and they last a lot longer than the sceptics tell you. Some BEVs have driven over one million miles on the original batteries and who is silly enough to think we will be using Lithium for ever? There are lots of alternatives in development.

I think we will see Smart Meters playing a part, there are already trials - which I opted out of - that allows household car chargers to be throttled back or closed down remotely if there is a supply problem. That will be popular I am sure if you need your car to get to work in the morning!

In my opinion there is a huge infrastructure and sceptics problem to be overcome and it probably can be overcome eventually but will the car manufacturers and the public be willingly going along with it? BEVs do not at the moment suit every driving requirement and are of course far too expensive to buy.

The running costs can be low but already one European charging company has hiked the price up to 80 Euros (69 pence) a unit of electricity. It throws the whole financial model for BEVs into disarray. At that price it is cheaper to buy a diesel if you can get hold of one. They are soon going to be very cheap.

And how long will it be before the Government finds an objectionable way to replace fuel duty? Isn’t that the reason the French started rioting more than a year ago?

I won’t be too unhappy if no one buys one, I can have another few years of driving around in silence feeling superior to everyone else.

 

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