4 October (Part 3) - Not for the riff-raff. Council use only
The Knights seem to be a family of engineers. My Great Grandfather spent his
life planning and building Indian railways, my Grandfather tinkered with ships’ boilers
until a torpedo got him in 1915, my father took Rolls Royce Merlins apart during the war and went on to have a hand in
developing Concorde’s engine, me in Telecoms, and my son is into vehicle design.
And there it might stop unless my Granddaughter realises her ambition to be an astronaut.
I would not be interested in cars if it was not for my son going on about his
work on developing and testing autonomous vehicles, not just cars but lorries in
convoy and buses too. He has ordered a Tesla because they are further down the
autonomous road than any other manufacturer. They are exclusively electrically
powered and his interest has rubbed off on me to some extent.
Bexley Council has shown some interest in electric cars too and is currently
asking residents’ opinion on charging infrastructure. Topping up the battery
on a long run takes best part of an hour on most cars and is a considerable
disincentive to ownership. My son is 144 miles away from Bexley and the only
fully electric cars that will go that far in all weathers at motorway speed cost £70,000 and
upwards or have a one year waiting list. New models from South Korea.
The current crop of affordable electric cars, Nissan Leaf and KIA Soul are not quite up to it. All too long in the tooth.
Even if you are happy to stop to charge on a 140 mile journey there is a very
good chance that you will find the Motorway Services Area chargers out of order.
The company that won the monopoly contract to install chargers at MSAs appears
to have run out of money and fails to maintain them. Not only that a software
issue has prevented them charging BMW and Hyundai electric cars.
So local councils installing chargers in car parks just off major trunk routes
looks to be a very good idea (†) and there are government grants available to do it.
If
you are thinking of going electric (or already gone) you may be overjoyed to know that Bexley
Council has just installed seven chargers. On the other hand you may not.
Looking after itself before residents as usual, every single one of them is for exclusive use
of Council employees only. Do any even own proper electric cars as opposed to
the ‘plug ins’ that use a traditional combustion engine for going more than a handful of miles?
None of the ‘pool’ cars being charged in the Civic Office’s car park last night were proper electric vehicles, they
are Toyotas which as electric cars are pretty much useless in terms of electric
range and one day Toyota is going to be in big trouble for publicly stating that
it has no intention of producing a non-polluting electric vehicle.
They will always rely on fossil fuels to go any real distance.
Yesterday the European Parliament threw an enormous bomb into the motor
manufacturers’ arena. Ignoring the pleas of the German manufacturers it said that
by 2025 every car manufacturer must be making at least 20% of its output totally
pollution free and 40% by 2035. Denmark has gone further and banned combustion
engine cars altogether by 2035. In the USA Tesla is already outselling BMW by a considerable margin.
Bearing in mind how long it takes to develop new vehicles Toyota may
be in big trouble. They have said they will produce no fully electric cars and
the EU has said their production must be 25% zero emissions in only seven years time.
Maybe they are hoping that enormous bomb will be Hydrogen powered, but if you
think the electric charging infrastructure is a disaster area don’t put any
faith in a hydrogen based salvation. At the last count there were only two places dispensing hydrogen
to vehicles in the entire country.
Maybe Bexley will put in a third - for Council use only of course.
† Bexley’s chargers look to be only 7 kilowatt units which is not to MSA standards which are usually 50 kW or higher.