THE USUAL SUSPECTS
As editor of Classic Porsche magazine, Keith Seume is naturally concerned about the future of petrol-burning cars, especially with regard to the availability of fuel. Is the answer to convert classics to electric power? Over his dead body, says our man, w
Keith Seume has his say
ONLY FUELS AND HORSES
‘What are you going to do when you can’t buy petrol any more?’ Sorry, what was that? ‘You know, when they ban the sale of cars fitted with internal combustion engines – there won’t be any need for petrol, so all the petrol stations will close and you’ll be stuck, won’t you? Your Porsche will just become a piece of sculpture sat gathering dust!’
So went a gleeful conversatioin with a guy I know who is, to be honest, a right royal self-opinionated tit. He knows I love cars – especially old ’uns – and knew how to hurt. ‘It says in the news that they’ll be gone by 2030,’ came the final twist of his metaphorical dagger. ‘I don’t care, I probably won’t be around by then,’ I quipped, before realising that it was only 12 years away and I’d feel very short changed if my life didn’t extend that far.
But what will happen to petrol stations? If, as has been mooted, cars with IC engines will no longer be on sale from 2030, or whatever date is finally settled on (today it’s 2040 – I do wish they’d make their minds up), the demand for petrol (and most certainly diesel) will plummet dramatically. By then, old cars – and by that I don’t mean true classics, but cars that are 10, 15 or 20 years old – will be the pariahs of the road, considered toxic by all and sundry. People will shake their fists at you, or don their face masks, Japanese-style, as you pull out of your driveway. They’ll laugh when they see you return home on the end of a tow rope after you’ve run out of fuel in the search for a petrol station. The prospect depresses me.
I can see the need for reducing emissions, don’t get me wrong, but I still think people are being hoodwinked into believing electric cars are the saviours of the universe. I’m always deeply suspicious when there is a major push like this to drive old technology off the road and see it for what it undoubtedly is: a way of making all we hold near and dear obsolete so we have no option but to buy new. Who wins? Certainly not the consumer. The manufacturers? Bingo! The government? Of course – you don’t honestly believe HMRC will happily give up all that revenue on petrol without grabbing it back somewhere else, do you? You may get seduced by promises of ‘free road tax’ but you’ll soon be asked to dig deep in other areas (road tolls are an obvious solution to the loss of revenue, or pay-as-you-go charges based on a GPS tracker fitted to each new vehicle), and gone will be any special incentives to ‘go green’ as you’ll have no option if you want to buy a new car.
But what of the petrol burners (and diesels, of course) that will still be thronging our highways. There’ll be mass scrappage schemes creating even more absurd images of perfectly good cars sitting in seried rows on former NATO air bases while somebody decides what to do with them all – how long before someobody comes up with the bright idea of selling them to underdeveloped nations as a sort of foreign aid scheme. Shift the pollution from our country to theirs – seems like a fair deal to me…
I am still not convinced about the argument that electric vehicles are better for the environment – what about the build process, the generation of electricity necessary to keep those lithium batteries topped up, the matter of ‘end of life’ disposal? It will take a lot to convince me to give up my Ic-engined bolides, especially living in the depths of Cornwall where many of my journeys involve 500-mile round trips ‘up country’.
Until I can be convinced that I will still be able to get up at 4.30am, drive to a photoshoot in the Midlands, and then drive home again later that day, I’ll stay with what I’ve got, thank you. At present, I’d have to stop every few hours for a quick recharge before continuing my journey. A one-day trip will become two. Life’s too short for all that.