Rowan Atkinson isn’t electric

Agree that a lot of what he says is correct especially regarding building less new cars and making fewer journeys, especially when there are alternatives such as the train for going city to city (I'm in Liverpool and Leeds this week and have left the car on the drive and used the train instead to avoid Monday morning on the M25 and M6 and its not a decision I'm regretting!).

The only trouble with the build less cars idea is that the car companies will struggle even more than they do to make profit so will be less inclined to invest in greener technologies and prices will soar with the result that even more drivers will be sticking to their petrol powered cars.

If we insist on staying on the road to replacing all ICE cars with battery powered ones we need to move away from the race for ever more range and ever bigger batteries. I still think that we need to come up with a universal battery that can be easily removed like a AA battery but for cars. That way you don't need it to be big just available and charged so it can be quickly swapped in and out at a filling station. If people still want range you could always build in additional slots to larger family cars so you can fit more batteries on the occasions you need to drive further but just have one the rest of the time. Or you just have different levels of charge for different prices at the forecourt so you might pay £5 for just a 20 mile pack or £50 for a 300 mile pack. You could even have higher voltage batteries for sports cars that provide more power but less range (sort of like super unleaded petrol). These batteries could all sit underground in what used to be the petrol and diesel tanks and could be charged by solar panels on the lovely big flat roof that sits over the forecourt and so reduce the current reliance on fossil fuels for electricity to charge them.

That makes much more sense than the current model of having fixed batteries which need charging overnight or from increasingly higher wattage charging stations and also does away with the problem of EVs sitting static for ages whilst someone else sits for even longer waiting for them to finish so they can then plug in for an hour. The increased downtime this causes is a major factor in many long distance drivers not willing to switch away from ICE just yet.

We need to challenge this. Some people's green agenda is about basically taking us back to the stone age, and I agree that is totally contrary to progress, freedom, and our rights. Hence this approach needs fighting whenever it pops up! Big business is not supportive of it, and governments need economic progreess to generate taxes for them to waste (sorry I mean spend wisely!). So the unwashed moaners will not necessarily win. Jordan Peterson is a good place to start for learning how to intelligently challenge the hairy yoofs who claim to know better than the rest of us... 

Yet the vast majority of BEV drivers I see are of retirement age

The charging-journey time effect and overall convenience factors are not widely discussed when BEVs are being discussed. This is because it's heresy to debunk BEVs because environmental considerations override every other argument apparently (see the back lash to Rowan Atkinson's piece in yesterday and today's media). The big push for BEVs comes from some very specific groups that don't understand that convenience effect because it doesn't affect them.

1. Young commentators that live in urban areas with great transport links and / or cycling distance between home and work. They don't care for travel outside of their comfort zone and likely seldom see any family member that lives a great distance away. It is also likely this group does not own a personal motor vehicle, not just because of any environmental reason (although they will vehemently tell you that is the reason) but because their mortgage / rent and bills consumes such a vast chunk of their total income that they cannot afford to buy and run one.

2. Older commentators that want to be seen to be considerate of the coming generations' lives. They, as suggested above, don't care about the travel time as their lives are not as rushed as others.

3. Well-off social grade A,B,Cs who can simply afford them and appear pious, despite flying abroad on foreign holidays to locations with huge food waste, permanent air con and electricity produced by burning tyres, or some such. (I include myself in that group)

The problem bites in several places and life phases. Group 2 will stop driving as much, almost never, but refuse to dispose of their car because they think it's the last bastion of independence. This leads to their homes being a harbour for destabilised power packs that could cause huge environmental damage if they corrode or even explode / combust.

Group 3 will become group 2. See last paragraph.

Group 1 is an interesting prospect. We can't assume that all group 1s will do well enough to become group 3. So when they procreate and need more space they need to move out of their urban bubble when they suddenly find that walking the kids to school across a dual carriageway and 2 miles through darkened lanes in the winter isn't viable. They need a car so that's fine: it can be an electric one. But that assumes they have charging availability at a decent rate (because public points are not as cheap as your domestic rate and often not as cheap as an ICE car. Then they need to do the stuff families do: camping, holidays, National Trust, seaside, lakes, theme parks etc. Their kids want to know "when will we get there" (I know this phrase very well!) and them asking it whilst you're sitting in a queue for a charging point is not really helpful. UK family visits are not as prevalent as other nations (we're a miserable bunch by and large) but consider visits to retired parents that have sold the family house (possibly to help fund that house out of the Urban bubble for their offspring)... and retired somewhere pleasantly quiet and affordable - which means it won't be near the Group 1's new house that needs to be near schools, travel connections etc. A visit to those parents as they age and, unfortunately, ail is suddenly a chore of charging at either end, mid trip etc. This is exacerbated in many European countries where my experience is that older parents move out of family city residences to make way for the next generation on the proviso that the offspring come to them often (like 2 weekends in 4 or more).

The issue of charging and electricity production can raise its head also. The electricity generators can sell all the electricity they can produce without needing to supply the BEV market (yes, I know there is over capacity at night but then BEV owners won't all have access to a charging point at night) so there is literally NO incentive for them to invest in providing a huge infrastructure that would make BEV ownership and use less fraught with range-anxiety. The shareholders would not see the benefit of such investment in the term of their investment and see only reduced dividends and increased leveraged borrowing. So they would block it. Hence the infrastructure for BEV use on long journeys is stymied and like mankind always does, some alternative will arise that retains the convenience of personal vehicle journeys as is currently available. For many journeys BEVs are better than ICE but then Betamax was a better format than VHS. Then along came DVDs.

Basically what I'm saying is that the convenience of personal transportation has been with us since the '50s when an automotive industry was created and the attempts to de-convenience it will never wash with the public at large. I could argue, for instance, that we could make savings on steel production if we banned sliced bread as there would be no need for the blades. Who imagines that the public at large would accept a world without sliced bread? even though the bread is the same and can fulfil the requirement of bread intake. That is what the BEV fraternity is proposing to car users. They can do what a car does and has done for over a century* but with less convenience. It's one step away (as Michael suggests) from having the masses reduced to serfdom and not being able to move between towns, cities, countries at any time ever as was the case in the times before the industrial revolution.



*in reality we should only talk about mass car ownership in Europe from the '50s and possibly even only back to the 1964 HP Act in the UK for new car ownership at scale.

but in the same paper

www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/08/fact-check-why-rowan-atkinson-is-wrong-about-electric-vehicles

Most criticism is focused on the " debunked " Volvo study - yet Volvo would have had absolutely zero reason to use incorrect assumptions or data in that study as they are " nuts deep " in the drive for electrification and Polar bear snuggling. Assumptions can and do get revised, but the Volvo study clearly highlighted two key elements that I don't think have changed much:

1) Production of BEV produces far more C02 than standard ICE

2) Once built, your EV is only as green as the electricity you charge it with.

The debunking from man in job that is " completely dependent on climate change not being a truck full of fairy horsehit " doesn't mention any useful facts for rebuttal - example, he states the Volvo study was debunked, but by whom, on what rationale and assumption set and by how much ? Fuck knows.

Such articles are quickly filed under " no detail - assume bollocks "

Cleaner fuels should be an adjunct to other methods, as should the move to alternative materials like corn husk for tyres etc. Lots of options but we ain't using 'em.

We bought a business last year which included a large commercial vehicle dealership within the group. I went to visit them a few weeks ago and we were talking about electric trucks (the artic or semi if you're American) and they shared the detail of one that is in limited production now. It's from a company called 'Nikola' (as Tesla is taken!). It has a range of c330 miles, which isn't bad I guess for something that weighs that much, but isn't enough for a vehicle of that type. With the right infrastructure it was charge in 90mins, so it's getting closer to usable I guess.

The biggest problem is the cost, which is somewhere north of £600k. I pay £100-120k for the equivalent diesel, which has a good residual after 3-4 years. You'd really have to want to make an ESG point to spend that much.

I think the max total weight was 35-36 tonnes and the weight of the unit was greater (something like 12-13t vs 8-9t), so less capacity than a diesel

It is a conflict I am aware of especially as I am thinking a out a long-haul trip next year. I am tight with the gas and electricity at home as much from a cost point of view as a green one and we always buy locally produced, sustainable food where possible.

Don't fall into the trap that eating beef is bad for the planet, BTW. Grass reared British beef actually benefits the environment and is worlds apart from grain-fed US and Australian feed-lot beef. There are fewer ruminants on the planet than probably ever before, so the whole 'beef is now ruining the planet' message falls at the first hurdle and is clearly a message favoured by those with vested interests elsewhere.

Lindsay has picked up the responsibility for the sustainable procurement team and was 'told off' for eating an Avocado earlier this week by one of them.....

Like ALF, I buy fewer more expensive things that last, but being honest, I don't think about it anywhere near as much as I should.   Any savings come from being sensible (eg turning the heating down) rather than a drive to reduce C02.   Travel is the top of my list of things to do and I particularly love the Far East, it would be very difficult to give up long haul travel.   We were deep in the early stages of the house extension at the time of year we'd normally go, so haven't had a big trip this year, which is something I guess, although we will have had quite a few short haul flights by the end of the year.

I'm another who would rather buy something expensive once. Having said that I do own rather a lot of, for example, t-shirts but many of them are well over 10 years old despite being worn fairly regularly.

I'm astounded at some of the things I see from normally sane, sensible people though.
For example when did the nonsense/stupidity that is Christmas jersey day start? I know at my work those who take part (the majority it seems) rarely want to wear the same jersey twice.
It's something that would be so easy to not do.

I read a road test of the latest Scania EV artic - if memory serves it has a 450kw/h battery pack (or 5 I-Pace packs if you will).

Assuming the Nikola has a similar sized pack, then that 90 minute charge must require the 350kw per hour charging. Do we even have those today in the UK ?  Imagine have 20 of those suckers running at full tilt - christ how thick would the cabling be to feed the charging hub.

Every time I point out in various forums that cities like London and Paris will never be able to cope with charging requirements of replacing all their traffic I get abuse and told : the capacity is there....

It may well be "there" but "there" is a power station 250km away feeding the city through a cabled network with ever diminishing cable cross section areas as it is delivered to the end point. Lots of people don't understand electricity and think it's like Jack's magic beans and can suddenly deliver 60A through a 13A appliance cable without catching fire. (60A is the largest single phase allowed). As Martin points put, the costs and work associated with providing large scale charging nationwide is UNBELIVEABLE and as I said earlier, there's absolutely zero incentive for the electricity producers to spend that money as they can sell all they can make as it is.