Electric cars: a cleaner, greener future?

The writing’s on the wall for the internal combustion engine, said Jack McKeown in The Courier (Dundee). On 4 February, the Government announced that sales of all new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars would be banned from 2035 – five years earlier than planned. This deadline is still some way off and, since it will only apply to new sales, it won’t transform things overnight. “A diesel car bought in 2033 might well run into the 2050s.” But make no mistake: we’re facing a “sea change in how we power our cars”. I’m a big fan of electric cars, said Rob Lyons on Spiked, but this ban feels too hasty. How is everyone going to charge their car when there are still so few public charging points around, and when many people lack drives or parking spaces where they can plug in their own lead? Where is the country going to find the huge amounts of power that will be needed to charge all these vehicles overnight?

It’s not even clear whether the reform will help the environment, said Nick Rufford in The Sunday Times. Electric cars, after all, are only as green as the electricity that charges them, and half of our power is currently generated from burning coal, oil and gas. Then you have to take account of all the carbon generated by manufacturing these vehicles – in particular their batteries, which require the extensive mining of lithium and cobalt. VW estimates that it takes almost 77,000 miles of motoring before an electric Golf has less impact on the environment than a diesel-powered one. The Government may come to regret this move. The French

gilets jaunes protests, sparked by a planned hike in fuel taxes, show that drivers “are slow to be riled, but a powerful lobby once they are”.

I seriously doubt that anyone shopping for a car in 2035 is going to be unhappy about not being able to buy a petrol one, said Ed Wiseman in The Daily Telegraph. When you consider how far electric cars have come – from the “hilariously rubbish G-Wiz” 15 years ago to the 155mph Porsche Taycan today – it’s clear where things are going. Electric cars are the future, agreed Hamish McRae in The Mail on Sunday. They free cities from exhaust pipe fumes and, with fewer moving parts than petrol or diesel vehicles, are easier to manufacture and cheaper to run. But it’s a mistake all the same simply to issue a blanket ban on non-electric vehicles, including the plug-in hybrids that, for many people, provide a useful transition to pure electric cars. The world needs to move towards a lower-carbon economy, but we’ll benefit from doing so in an “orderly way that is driven by economic sense. Not because we are told to by some here today, gone tomorrow politician.”