Jaguar I-Pace

REPORT 9

£69,995 OTR/£78,490 as tested/£785pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

Can this new breed of Jaguar tackle the dominance of Tesla?

DRIVER

Paul Horrell

THIS PHOTO OF THE SO-CALLED ‘SUPER-MOON’ WAS SHOT IN EARLY April. Not from a telescope up a mountain on a mid-ocean island, but by me, with an amateur camera from outside my front door. Which is right by one of London’s most polluted roads.

Pollution isn’t so much of a thing in London right now. Which shows why, when the lockdown eventually lifts, we need more clean vehicles like the Jaguar.

On a normal day, cities are choked with old and badly serviced cars and vans, kicking out too many soot particles and NOX that darken the air and stifle the breathing of the elderly, bring on heart disease and choke the asthmatic. Oh and slow the development of children’s brains.

The most recent authoritative scientific study, by the Max Planck Institute, calculates that air pollution causes 64,000 early deaths every year in the UK. Much of that pollution comes from traffic. Look at a London pollution map and it looks uncannily like a road map.

Now, the reason we’ve got no traffic as I write is that we’re facing the human disaster of the coronavirus. On the night of the supermoon, UK deaths from that cause passed a ghastly total of 7,000. It’ll get worse, but for it to get to 64,000 would be unbelievably dark. And this is, we fervently hope, a once-in-a-century event.

Yet, here we are, somehow tolerating 64,000 deaths from air pollution every single year. Or put another way, it shortens the average Briton’s life expectancy by more than 500 days.

For all our sakes, get a clean car, or keep yours serviced so it runs as cleanly as it can.