As host of COP26, our Government wanted to be seen as “world leaders in reducing CO2 emissions”, and so before the meeting it announced the U.K. would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030. It hoped it could then persuade other countries to follow our lead. It completely failed and no other major country went along with this: Germany, Japan, Italy and China do not propose a ban until 2035, France and Spain do not propose a ban until 2040 and the USA and India are not proposing any ban at all.
It is not hard to see why other countries were so unenthusiastic to inflict this policy on their population. Electric cars are so expensive. For example, Nissan’s basic electric car, the Leaf, has a recommended retail price (RRP) of £26,995, whereas its equivalent petrol car, the Micra, has an RRP of £16,685. The cheapest Tesla is the Model 3, which has an RRP of £45,990 or more, depending on the version. The petrol equivalent is a BMW 3 series, which has an RRP of £29,990 or more, again depending on the version. The running costs of electric cars are lower – charging a battery is cheaper than filling a tank with petrol – but for the average U.K. motorist, who has an annual mileage of 7,400 miles, these lower running costs will never compensate for the very high purchase price.
The lower running cost of electric cars is in any case largely an artefact of Government fiscal policy, namely the enormous amount of tax on petrol. Most of the cost of a litre of petrol is tax, whereas there is only 5% VAT on electricity. These very high rates of tax on petrol mean that if motorists switch from petrol to electric then the Government will face a black hole in its finances. The Government therefore will need to find a way of taxing electric vehicles to make up for this lost revenue. A plan under discussion is to install tracking devices in cars such that the Government knows how many miles you are driving and can then charge you a “per mile road tax”. If this happens, the running costs of electric cars will rapidly increase.
There are also serious questions about how ‘green’ electric cars actually are. The mining and processing of the rare earth metals used in the batteries is particularly energy intensive. A recent study by Volvo found that the manufacture of electric cars generated much more CO2 emissions than the manufacture of an equivalent petrol car. According to this study, the average motorist in the U.K. would have to drive an electric car for 10 years before it breaks even in its total carbon footprint (manufacture plus driving) with the equivalent petrol car.
In just over seven years’ time most of the world will still have the freedom to choose whether to buy an electric car or a petrol car. But in Britain the Government will be forcing us to buy extremely expensive electric cars that do very little to reduce overall CO2 emissions. This is to say nothing of well-known problems with range and charge-time, and whether the grid can cope with so many motorists charging their vehicles. Why is the Government in such a rush? Why not allow more time for the technology to develop and hopefully become cheaper and more efficient, and the country to be better prepared? After all, Britain only produces 1% of global CO2 emissions. Three countries produce half of global CO2 emissions; China produces 29% and is not intending to ban petrol cars until 2035, whilst the USA produces 14% and India 7% and neither country is proposing any ban at all.
John Fernley is a retired scientist.
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New petrol and diesel driven cars – might be ongoing life in the old bangers, after all.
Rumour has it that there is a new petrol, called “Blue Gas” which is made from Ammonia (a new cheap way of producing it) which will replace petrol, but works in all petrol driven cars – which will ace electric cars for good – hope it gets released soon!!
Electric vehicles catch fire when the electricity current shorts out = instant fire – did you read about the recent car carrier (ship) which caught fire, it was thought from an electric car in its hold which caught fire – that ship eventually sank, taking all of the luxury cars it carried, down with it?
Was me and I owned one of these electric cars, I would not house it in a garage attached to my home- might wake up one day, burned to a crisp along with everything I once owned!!
Carrie at work on Johnson’s Ear?
The problems with electric cars don’t end with the massive hole they are going to create in the UK’s tax system.
A very large percentage of the UK’s housing stock simply will not allow electric vehicles to be charged at home.
Millions of UK city dwellers live in places with no private off-street parking. Even those that do have off-street parking face challenges. My brother and his wife have a third-floor flat in a London detached house. When they asked about running a charging cable for their electric vehicle to the parking space in the front of the property, the electricians told them they were mad, as it would require the permission of multiple parties, including the freeholder, all the other residents, and the local council planning department.
For a country on its knees, bankrupt, with very little that actually works due to a scamdemic. Why they would choose to even think about cars, petrol, diesel, electric or whatever is hysterical. Hey looking good then for the future for little britain. You will all have a little electric car. No energy to charge them of course, no healthcare, but half of the population will be dead anyway from the poisons now being given out at your local surgery. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
395,000 battery cars registered on UK roads at the moment.(this after EVs have been on sale in the UK for 10+ years)
33 million ICE cars registered on UK roads at the moment.
There is no way on this Earth that, with the initial purchase cost of EVs, the pollution numbers outlined in this article, the range anxiety, the inability of many people to be able to charge an EV, the looming tax and electricity cost rises and worries about the cost of replacement batteries (which will impact the second-hand EV market) that these things will ever be anything but a massive white elephant and a technical dead-end.
As an aside, I’d guess the mercurial Mr Musk is riding for an enormous fall and Tesla will be gone in five years.
This ludicrous “Britain is a world-leader” idea is just another of Johnson’s cowardly deceits and the sooner it’s accepted as such, then so much the better.
Madness!
We have to overturn this madness. Gas boilers and wood-burners too.
The Eco Loons pushing the EV policy don’t want “the peasants” to switch to EVs. They know damn well they can’t afford them. The real policy is to force millions to give up their cars altogether …. leaving the roads nicely free-flowing Zil lanes for “the elite.”
I can’t find full Environmental Impact Studies for EVs or wind turbines. Has anyone got any links?
All based on the green nonsense which has been comprehensively disproved by real scientists. Unfortunately many, including Boris, see it as a means of control like they have never experienced before, like it, and welcome it.
Time the government did a rapid U turn on this commitment that will see older, less clean and fuel efficient, petrol and diesel cars being kept for longer, and their price inflated as there will still be significant demand for them.
I think we need to be careful what we wish for, to stop old cars being kept on the road the Gov may simply tax them off the road or introduce new MOT rules which old cars cannot meet thus forcing them off the road.
The post below seems correct, the Gov want to stop the hoi-polloi from owning their own vehicles and enjoying the fantastic egalitarian travel freedom that petrol/diesel cars have provided
The UK will not ban petrol cars.
My understanding is that the UK will stop the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and will not issue any new registrations for diesel/petrol cars. This may be academic as the way things are going in the world there may not be any new petrol/diesel cars available by 2030.
The sale of petrol/electric hybrids could continue for a bit longer, but no manufacturer would invest in a new product unless there is a reasonable forecast of the market for a few years – say 8 to 10 years minimum. Entirely possible that the policy has a negative effect on continued development of engines, e.g. improved efficiency and so on.
Some manufacturers now only offer petrol hybrid models of some brands, with no diesel option – e.g. Toyota.
Most mornings, a part of my routine is to check how renewables are going on providing for the electric demand… today, all of the renewable supplies are providing 3.9% of demand.
It makes me proud to know that we, in this country, are at the forefront of this magnificent technology and, like those who govern us, I can’t think of a single thing that might go wrong. In fact, it is clear to me that we should ban the use of gas and other fossil fuels immediately, after all gas is only providing a piffling amount at 83.4%, it’s clear we can do without it…
Our money is being wisely spent, thank God for Boris and his Green agenda.
Of the 444,871 cars currently on offer on Autotrader uk, 117,042 of them are priced under £10,000. (26%.)
Apply that 26% to the 33 million cars on British roads and that’s a lot of people engaging in minimal cost motoring.
Take into consideration those living in terraced housing or high-rise apartments and you have many millions of people for whom electric cars are impractical and/or, unaffordable.
This push towards electric cars has nothing to do with the environment, it’s all about removing car ownership from the grasp of ordinary working people under the pretense of protecting the climate.
Thank you for the numbers. It freaks the left out.
Correct and welcome.
You are quite right this electric car illusion is a huge con on the majority of people who have been sold the dream of a gleaming Tesla but for whom the reality will be standing in the rain waiting for the local driverless community uber-taxi which will not arrive because it has been vandalised.
There are currently 33 million registered petrol/diesel cars, how many electric cars is it possible to have on UK roads? how much electric charging capacity can we install? how many batteries can we re-cycle per annum, indeed can we re-cycle any? I think it is optimistic to think we can cope with 5 million electric cars on UK roads.
And for an electric car to be viable it needs to have a working battery worth £4000 or more and so it is hard to see the secondhand price of workable electric cars drop below £5000. Whereas at the moment I can buy a serviceable secondhand Ford Fiesta for £1500. This whole electric car business is hugely socially divisive, with great swathes of lower and middle income people no longer having the cheap travel freedom that diesel/petrol cars have provided.
I agree with you. I’ve been saying for a long time that the whole intention is to reserve (electric) car use for the “elite”.
Car use has given people the freedom to go where they want, when they want. You can live in one place and travel to work in another, you can have days out, pursue hobbies, do whatever you like. The car has given people that freedom.
But if you have to rely on buses or trains, it’s not nearly so easy. And bus fares are not cheap, either. If your day out was to take two children, your picnic, buckets and spades and the family dog on a bus, it would be stressful before you even start. Plus you would have to go and return when the bus went and came back. Not much freedom of choice for you….so maybe you’d just stay put.
That’s what TPTB want….the proles under control, not wandering about.
The sale of new diesel and petrol cars will be banned in the UK from 2030, but that doesn’t mean you can’t buy one in another country and have it delivered here does it (or drive it back from that country)?
But it may mean that you cannot register it in the UK and that it will have to remain a foreign registered car.
Vote Green … go green (as you see the cost of Johnson’s green madness)
The electric car technology is already very efficient. At sucking up government subsidies.
Why use a tracking device to tot up mileage? Plain old petrol cars all have a mileometer which is checked and recorded at every MoT. Old tech, but it works.
As for petrol tax, Edwina “Egg production” Curry was recently raving on the radio abt how cheap it is tp run an electric car. How many years does it take as an MP to achieve such a level of naivety!
I imagine they’d want to combine the data with where you were, and when, so that they might charge you the road tolls accordingly?
…
Some quick arithmetic shows that EVs are no cheaper to run if there was a taxation level playing field. In fact if you change up at service station, many of which charge north of 50p per kWh, they are more expensive than a ICE.
But the tax bias doesn’t stop on the energy costs. The government has reduced company car tax to 0% for EVs and even luxury car tax is waived for EVs over £40k (i.e. all Teslas).
How many covid bounce back loans funded all these new Teslas which suddenly appeared on UK roads in what was supposed to be a deep recession? Of course the taxpayer will end up paying for this too.
I explained this in 2021 to a friend who’d bought a 2nd hand elec van. He’d been recording how many miles per kWh (or kWh per 100 km) it achieved and thought it was much better than the previous diesel van. He was surprised when I told him it cost about the same (ex-tax).
RFK’s best-seller is back in stock at Blackwells …
https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Real-Anthony-Fauci-by-Robert-Francis-Kennedy/9781510766808
That Fauci book is brilliant.
It explains what has really been going on, which is very different from what the BBC and other mainstream media tell us.
This is typical of the current government. A half baked ill thought through policy which inflicts unnecessary misery and cost on the general public.
Reset.
As another angle on this article, the current situation revolving around Ukraine is revealing some incomprehensible priorities held by both the UK state and majority of its population.
Apparently we are to be deeply worried about and expend vast amounts of time, money and energy on a (completely unsubstantiated) ‘threat’ of relatively tiny average temperature rises (ones which have recently mysteriously disappeared) taking place over the course of several decades.
Sufficiently panicked, in fact that we should be willing to throw away pretty much all of the benefits that the fossil-fuel powered Industrial Revolution gifted us with in terms of massively improved longevity and general quality of life; specifically in the case highlighted by this article, the enormous benefits (in terms of travel freedom, mobility for the elderly, disabled, single parents, etc) provided by relatively cheap and reliable personal transport.
When you strip away all the vastly funded Climate Change pseudo-science what you are left with is the gigantic hubris of humanity believing it can fully understand, much less control, the ever-changing and infinitely complex worldwide climate system.
At the same time as this Chicken Little mass hysteria over a future non-event, the now hugely increased genuine and imminent threat… Read more »
From what I’ve seen, quite a lot of people would die rather slowly from a nuclear attack.
I think society in general has become more fearful (the snowflake generation?), which I see as in large part the result of attacks on the family and family life over a number of decades, though no doubt there are other factors.
Agree with both your points.
The sheer horror of nuclear war, especially for those who survive the initial explosions and fireballs, makes medieval painted depictions of hell look like gentle rural scenes.
Also about the excessively fearful nature of modern culture, eg terrors over the weather (‘Climate Change’), sugary foods, and, of course, a flu-like disease (COVID19).
It was the irony of this contemporary extreme concern for health and longevity coexisting with a complete lack of interest in the genuine existential threat posed by nuclear weapons that I was highlighting.
The breakdown of conventional family values is indeed relevant, and this is in turn a symptom of the general abandonment of spiritual beliefs (which can alleviate fear of death).
The modern eco-health movement is resolutely materialistic and atheistic.
Very good. Don’t forget the reset.
Thanks, and both individual states and supra-state organisations such as the WEF and UN are certainly heavily pushing the whole Green agenda using James Bond villain / 1984 type slogans as ‘The Great Reset’ and ‘Build Back Better’.
But I think it’s important to recognise that this is not being primarily imposed top down; the majority of people in the West have adopted environmentalism (and it’s Climate Change Book of Revelations) as a substitute religion for both Christianity and the now largely abandoned class-based version of Marxism.
Fair points .
Russia did the same for a while but now (under “new Hitler Putin”) they have, like several African countries, apparently become too Christian (well perhaps not according to Justin Welby – if you can count him as a Christian…).
Organised Christianity is a double-edged sword and can be used for harmful purposes (such as claims of divine support for a war) when the anti-violence teachings of Jesus himself are ignored.
Leo Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church for pointing out this glaring moral discrepancy in its vigorous support for Tsarist military endeavours, and his grave spinning is currently causing minor earthquakes near his Yasnya Polyana burial site.
Didn’t he believe in fatalism?
Tolstoy’s views changed somewhat as he grew older (mainly a firming up process rather than radical transformation) but as far as I am aware he always strongly believed in the duty of the individual to control their behaviour through their consciences, ie he believed in free will rather than fatalism.
By middle age anyway he had developed a fully spiritual faith based on his earlier conventional (Russian Orthodox) Christianity, but rejecting any elements which contradicted ‘the law of love’ such as support for warfare and violence in general (he also became a vegetarian).
As pointed out above for the heresy of actually agreeing with Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount he was formally ejected from the Orthodox Church (he had ceased attending in any case), and it is probable that he only escaped internment or worse by the Tsarist regime because he was by then one of the world’s most famous authors. He was also part of a very prominent ancient noble line with court connections, though he again renounced his title as Count Tolstoy in later life.
The main area where I disagree with Leo Tolstoy was his espousal of a strict asceticism and proto-environmentalism – he advocated… Read more »
About 90% of people were fooled into believing there was a deadly pandemic.
Millions were tricked into taking ‘vaccines’ which are not true vaccines as they don’t work and are dangerous.
After decades of lies about man-made Climate Change, millions of half-wits have been scared into believing the lie that mankind has any significant impact upon atmospheric temperatures.
Pathetic, really, that so many are easily fooled and have no power of critical thinking.
From the moment that Margaret Thatcher launched the Climate Change pseudo-science and agenda onto the political public stage in 1988 (in part to try and justify her government’s wholesale destruction of UK heavy industry and coal mining) the British state and general green movement has expended vast amounts of time and energy in propagandising the ideology.
This campaign has fully permeated the education system, with children indoctrinated into climate alarmism and general environmentalism from a very early age.
The green ideology also includes a strong ultra-health dimension (eat your organic carrots etc) which helps explain the overwhelming public support for ridiculously tyrannical coronavirus measures such as lockdowns.
“the gigantic hubris of humanity believing it can fully understand, much less control, the ever-changing and infinitely complex worldwide climate system ”
Exactly.
We’re at gas Mark 3. Can we turn it down to gas mark 2? FFS!
Could be a problem if we have to turn the heating up.
Of course climate bollox is all part of the scam.
CONTROL.
A friend of mine had to give up his old car which he rarely drove because although it took green fuel, it did not comply with a 2005 EU Directive that tfl voluntarily complies with. I might have considered buying an electric car one day before the Green madness took hold, now I will not do so on principle. I will get myself a windy ozone layer eroding Oxon and cart instead. It should take the bureaucrats a while to get around to legislating against such alternatives.
Yep, horse and cart is my plan, will also be handy for ploughing once they ban tractors. I mean, how is that going to work, a battery powered tractor??? Can see a huge market for old skills coming back.
There was a story about someone who went to a McDonald’s drive through on horseback. Apparently they refused to serve him!
I have wondered if some people would go back to carrier pigeons if the internet got too bad…
Oxen or Oxford? (Actually it could be a Morris Oxford…).
Opps! Ideally I would like to purchase a Morris Oxen.
@JohnFernley
The basic premise is correct,
“There are also serious questions about how ‘green’ electric cars actually are.”
but this bit is partly wrong:
“The mining and processing of the rare earth metals used in the batteries is particularly energy intensive.”
It’s true, but REEs are used in wind turbines predominantly (Nd magnets etc.). Besides all the (lots-of-coal-used-to-manufacture) steel-mounted turbines, which are also highly “un-green”…
The batteries of most EVs are actually made up of Nickel, Cobalt, Lithium, Graphite in varying amounts (first two highest, but maybe up to 500-800kg per vehicle in total!) and they are both energy intensive and can be highly environmentally polluting and socially problematic. Russia produces 30% of world Ni, and China is the processor of over 60% of all these metals and the others… not much environmental control there or worry about CO2 etc
“A recent study by Volvo found that the manufacture of electric cars generated much more CO2 emissions than the manufacture of an equivalent petrol car. According to this study, the average motorist in the U.K. would have to drive an electric car for 10 years before it breaks even in its total carbon footprint (manufacture plus driving) with the equivalent petrol car.”
Indeed, but… Read more »
Excellent points (and yet another indication of why the policy towards Russia is stupid).
All these shenanigans have nothing to do with the protection of anybody’s wellbeing. They’re a distraction.
Of course, we should aim to avoid pollution (I mean, the actual honest-to-God pollution of genuinely dangerous substances), and a great deal has been done on that score.
But the moment we heard talk of “saving the planet”, we might have known that we were heading into the world of a quasi-religious cult: with its high priests, intolerance of others, disdain for economic facts, and general irrationality.
Unfortunately, it isn’t. Over on the other side of the Irish Sea, the same agenda is being pushed by the Kermit party (green on the outside, red on the inside). Unless legislation is reversed, we will be in the same situation.
You have more pressing issues, friend.
LOL.
Arrogant human nonsense. The planet will rid itself of us when it is ready. Like a dog shedding fleas.
Let’s hope GC was right.
They want to cut down our mobility.
By “our mobility” I assume you mean the mobility of the less well off. If you can afford an EV and have a driveway on which to charge it you’ll be O.K.
If you have to use on street parking forget it. It’s often impossible to find a parking space within 50m of where I live, and sometimes not even on the same street. Am I expected to have up to 100m of extension cable and see the whole street crisscrossed with cables, or spend ages queueing up for a public charger? even assuming I could afford an EV in the first place.
My favourite subject of the moment.
Public chargers are the solution, or so we are told. In service stations.
When they are crowded, you are fucked.
Perhaps we’ll have overhead power lines lining streets with no off street parking, that brats can hand trainers from.
Sorry. To late to give a detailed description of my support for your comment.
Ah, the Top Gear solution, and going on the motorway will be like the dodgems!
Anyway, haven’t trolley buses been tried before?
Many electric chargers are often broken at motorway service stations. The ones working are woefully small in number. The 100 kW ones use electricity at the rate of 2000 UK homes. If you had all electric cars, no diesel or petrol a major services would need 2000 plus chargers working most of 24 hours per day, due to the charging time needed. (We can look at a large petrol station at busy periods – often 30 or more vehicles at pumps, but they only stop for 5 minutes. That’s 360/hour. If charging takes 6 times longer, around 30 minutes, you easily fill your 2000 chargers.)
So, you’ve created an equivalent city of 4 million homes in electricity use at ONE service station.
Sorry, wrong sums above and the edit button has disappeared
Many electric chargers are often broken at motorway service stations. The ones working are woefully small in number. The 100 kW ones use electricity at the rate of 200 UK homes. If you had all electric cars, no diesel or petrol a major services would need 2000 plus chargers working most of 24 hours per day, due to the charging time needed. (We can look at a large petrol station at busy periods – often 30 or more vehicles at pumps, but they only stop for 5 minutes. That’s 360/hour. If charging takes 6 times longer, around 30 minutes, you easily fill your 2000 chargers.)
So, you’ve created an equivalent city of 400,000 homes in electricity use at ONE service station.
A friend:” People down the road from us have bought a Tesla.”
Me: “Have they got a second car?”
Him: “Oh yes, they’ve kept the Porsche.”
Driverless Tesla crashes into $3.5M private jet at aviation trade show in Spokane, WA.
Its pathetic, 1st with the vaccine rollout, 1st into Ukraine, now alone in banning petrol and diesel……. why the extremism on the world stage?
I wouldn’t worry. It’s a Boris promise so it doesn’t mean anything
Its called THE CITY OF LONDON. The people making these decisions at the top level are the controllers of THE CITY OF LONDON. They also have their stooges in UK politics making sure that they get their own way EVERY TIME.