Electric vehicles are the Betamax of transport – govt should scrap the all-electric deadline to avoid economic disaster
JUST seven years remain until all new vehicles sold in the UK must be electric.
To you and me, 2030 may seem a long way off, but to the motor industry — which plans years in advance — the 2,550-plus days left are the blink of an eye.
Vehicle manufacturers, which employ 800,000 people in the UK, normally work a minimum of five years ahead.
Which means 2023 may be the last year left to be able to scrap the crazy decision to bully Britain into a battery-fuelled vehicle cataclysm.
Events over the Christmas break showed that the UK is far from ready to go all-electric.
At Gretna Welcome Break Services, dozens of Tesla drivers trying to get to and from Scotland over the holidays queued for three hours just to begin charging.
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A brother and sister had to stop SIX times in one day to charge their rented Tesla because the battery drained so quickly in the cold weather.
Elsewhere there have even been fights outside supermarkets and restaurants to get access to charging points.
Astronomical costs
And this week that model of efficiency, Switzerland, is considering banning electric vehicles — EVs — to conserve the country’s energy supplies.
Yet our dictatorial government continues to ignore overwhelming evidence that EVs are fast becoming the Betamax of transport.
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The latest FairFuelUK poll of 27,000 motorists who currently drive diesel or petrol vehicles shows the tsunami of green praise and love for EVs is fast fading away.
Full results will be published in the coming weeks but here is a sneak preview.
Just over half — 51 per cent — say they intend to stick with petrol or diesel and will not buy a new EV.
Meanwhile, 35 per cent will buy a hybrid vehicle ahead of the 2030 deadline when sales of new petrol or diesel vehicles in the UK will end.
But only one in ten — 11 per cent — say they will switch to an EV when that deadline arrives, while three per cent don’t yet know what they will do.
Of those who do support EVs, 86 per cent say they drive less than 100 miles at any one time, so charging their vehicle’s battery is not a major issue.
Worryingly for the Tories and Labour, from FairFuelUK’s poll, two out of three intend to vote for the party that will dump the 2030 ban.
So far, the only party to declare scrapping the 2030 ban is Reform UK.
How can the politicians from mainstream parties, wearing their green-tinted specs, ignore the facts about EVs and the 2030 deadline?
Manufacturing a “pure” battery-powered vehicle creates more CO2 than an equivalent fossil-fuelled car — in some cases up to 74 per cent more, according to Berryls Strategy Advisors.
Also, as we saw over Christmas, Britain has nowhere near enough charging points.
EV Energy Taskforce says the UK needs between 253,000 and 661,000 more EV charging points by 2035 to meet the phase-out of petrol and diesel.
At the moment we have fewer than 40,000.
Unless the capacity of the national grid is expanded by tens of gigawatts, there will be insufficient power to meet the proposed growth in battery-powered electric vehicle ownership and maintain anything like our current treasured freedom of motoring movement.
The cost of expanding the generating capacity of the national grid to include local networks and charging points that can accommodate the planned explosion in electric vehicles would be little short of astronomical.
And don’t forget experts at economics consultancy CEBR recently estimated the cost of the 2030 ban and going EV is five times that of any alleged environmental benefits.
So, expanding the national grid to supply the proposed fleet of battery-powered electric vehicles may have to be subsidised by inflated household electricity bills or from general taxation.
Meanwhile, Britain’s biggest electric car gigawatt battery firm, Britishvolt, may slide into insolvency and take with it thousands of future jobs in the North East.
More taxpayers’ money could be needed to keep it afloat even after mining giant Glencore stumped up cash to keep this EV battery start-up out of administration.
Time’s running out
And a report by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence — experts in the battery-to- electric-vehicle supply chain — estimates at least 384 new mines for raw materials such as graphite, lithium, nickel, and cobalt will be needed to meet global electric vehicle demand by 2035.
So we need to start investing in domestic mines today. On top of this there is the cost of dismantling the current fuel distribution system and the possible loss of local jobs.
Many petrol stations will become a “stranded asset”, as they are unlikely to have the space to accommodate vehicles charging for possibly several hours or overnight.
EVs must not be the solitary choice to maintain our precious freedom to drive.
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Even Toyota chief executive Akio Toyoda says his industry does not believe EVs can ever replace diesel and petrol vehicles as the future road transport’s “single energy option”.
It is not yet too late to scrap Britain’s 2030 ban and lead the world in financial common sense instead of economic Armageddon — but time is running out.