‘Futility’ of electric vehicles

Madam, – I am sure that neither Mr Harry Key nor myself has anything against the theory of vehicles being run by means of electricity but there is just so much misunderstanding about such a switchover happening to more than 38 million vehicles in the UK that we can see that it will just never take place.

In the finality of things, there will be no trouble generating sufficient electricity to power all those vehicles but making the power and getting it to the end-user are two very different things.

Why should we all pay for a massive 300% increase in our overhead grid power lines and have every street in the land dug up to lay heavier cables when hydrogen can be produced so easily as is currently being done in Orkney?

That fuel produces completely harmless exhaust gases, and once created in specific coastal tidal power stations, can be so easily put into ordinary road tankers and taken to traditional petrol stations?

Why should anyone want to plug an electric car into a power-point for several hours to fuel it up when a hydrogen car can be re-fuelled in the same time as a petrol or diesel vehicle?

Do the makers of electric vehicles not realise that the chemical contents of the necessary batteries are not only extraordinarily heavy but involve somewhat scarce metals which are, and will remain, in the hands of a very small number of countries and companies?

Fossil fuels must eventually diminish in quantity in the coming years but when they finally run out, electricity will not power vehicles – hydrogen will! Archibald A. Lawrie. 5 Church Wynd, Kingskettle.