Unclean machines

I had to smile at Scott Holland’s letter ‘Stuck in the past?’ (evo 292) and his opinion of those ‘hillbillies’ driving V8s. I don’t own or drive a V8, ‘just’ a straight-six, which I guess does not meet with Scott’s approval either. The thing is, whenever I see a Tesla or Taycan or the like, I cannot help thinking that the driver is feeling smug that he or she is somehow helping the planet (or it could just be a tax benefit), when in reality the additional electricity that must be produced to power their vehicle is coming wholly from fossil fuels, some of it coal, because all the renewable and nuclear energy available is already accounted for to power homes and businesses.

The day will come when such cars will be ‘clean’, but that is still a long way off, and by that time the electric vehicles of today will be made obsolete by far superior battery technology.

Ian Tatler