Electric vehicles not the way forward

Sir, – An hour-long TV programme lately attempted to illustrate an electric vehicle owner’s honest outlook on what benefits and drawbacks he found with his new electric car.

Unfortunately, he either had not enough time to go more deeply into the mathematics of EVS... or he chose not to dig too deeply into the figures.

He was honest enough to say, however, that electric cars cost “about double” the amount of our current fossilfulled vehicles... all of which left me wondering how, by the deadline of 2030, the average man-in-the-street would ever be able to afford a car at all.

Currently, the cost of housing for any young couple is pushing all finances to the limit and I read of families cutting heating costs and using the services of foodbanks. It struck me that by 2030, when we were all meant to be “saving the planet”, a good percentage of the UK population will not be able to afford any sort of vehicle... especially an electric one. This may well force us back to the Victorian days when only the very wealthy could afford a family car.

The programme was honest enough to highlight the difficulties of charging those vehicles and we saw car owners living in a terraced street where the houses had no gardens and where the present occupiers were nightly pulling charging cables out of their front doors and across the pavements to plug them into their EVS... provided they could get them parked outside their doors. Because of the lengthy charging time necessary, those cables would probably lie across pedestrian pavements for much of the night.

I know of a terraced street of that nature that has about 30 houses down each side of it. Am I to believe that in that part of the town by 2030, as many as 60 charging cables will be strung across that pedestrian right-of-way?

A baby in a pram passing down the pavement will be having a rather bumpy time and who does a pedestrian sue when he breaks a wrist by tripping over one of perhaps 30 cables?

It’s just not going to happen as our dreaming politicians think it will.

Archibald A Lawrie.

Church Wynd, Kingskettle.