It’s not a shock revelation, we just can’t afford electric cars
ICONTINUE to be amazed at the disconnect between the Government and the motoring public. Our leaders tell us that the production of all new petrol and diesel cars will be banned in just nine years time.
And as a result car manufacturers, one after the other, are planning to go all electric - or face going out of business.
We weren’t consulted on this, there was no vote, no referendum, it was decided on our behalf by a Government searching for ways to achieve an arbitrary net zero carbon target by 2050.
Fine, we don’t want to fry, or disappear under the waves, though global warming was the last thing on people’s minds as they were cut in half by the Arctic blast on Cleethorpes seafront at the weekend.
Yes, we have to do our bit, even though it will be totally pointless if China, India and other Far Eastern nations making up half the world’s population continue to base their economies on fossil fuels.
But given that that Is the path chosen for us, there is a missing piece of the jigsaw here, an important part of the net zero equation
How are Britain’s 30 million drivers going to make the transition into the world of ‘green’ motoring? On that there appears to be silence. Oh yes, vague promises that prices will come down, range will go up, and a national charging infrastructure will magically appear. It’s akin to telling Stone Age man to become mobile before anybody’s even thought about inventing the wheel.
Now while some of the well heeled, the green believers and those won over by the long term sums might indulge, the majority of us can see no way that we will be buying an electric vehicle in the near future, particularly in a low wage area like ours.
We may look at it, examine the figures, see the advantages but then recoil at the up front cost and other imponderables.
Who is going to shell out £30,000plus for a small electric car, or maybe £50,000 for a large family car, when the petrol/diesel equivalents are so much more affordable? Who wants to run out of juice in a snowstorm halfway home from a distant airport with three young children in the back?
While there are more EVs on the road now, lockdown for a whole winter means there have been few long distance family trips in batterydraining bad weather by any sort of vehicle.
Those tempted by the lure of a future of low cost electric motoring might ask themselves where the Government will make up the tax shortfall, the £27 billion paid in fuel duty plus billions more in VAT? As sure as night follows day, it will find a way to tax electric motoring, a real electric shock.
With the new car market a nonstarter for the majority, what about going second hand?
Many people buy cars in the £5,000 to £15,000 bracket and can look forward to several years of largely trouble free driving.
So who is going to pay £20,000 for a three-year-old small electric car? It’s a hell of a lot to commit to for an old number plate when, for obvious reasons, there is no substantial evidence of longevity in the sector. Now for a Government so committed to net zero we might expect there to be a plan. We might think that ministers would devise incentives to ensure that we don’t enter the 2030s driving old vehicles powered by internal combustion. What’s the track record so far? For private buyers it is one of incentives reducing, not increasing. Purchase grants have been reduced from £4,500 to £3,500 and will drop further to £3,000, while hybrid grants have been scrapped. Ministers say more generous grants are not needed as more EVs are now being bought. Yes, they are grabbing a tiny but increasing proportion of the market, but that’s because the overall market has collapsed due to uncertainty as drivers hang on to their old vehicles as they wait for ‘’something to happen”. That “something” is in the hands of the Government. I fear it will think more about further disincentives to buy conventional vehicles rather than helping us to make a greener choice.
It clearly has to up its game if it wants the motoring public to, quite literally, ‘buy’ into the electric revolution.