Demand for electric cars has dried up and it’s time for a rethink, says billionaire founder and Chairman of chemicals giant INEOS, Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Writing in the Telegraph, he says the “notion of a quick transition away from petrol was always barmy”. Here’s an excerpt.
The electric car is not popular today. The early adopters have all bought theirs so now the car giants are having to persuade ‘normal punters’ of the merits of going electric. And they are having none of it.
There is a rather fundamental drawback with the electric car. It simply doesn’t do what you want a car to do. It doesn’t get you from A to B reliably if you are on a long journey. And you have no idea whether you will be able to fill it up. Put it together and it’s referred to as ‘range anxiety’. And it’s very real.
Electric is fine and dandy for the short local journey, but should you decide to head off for the hills, forget it. And hence demand has dried up. Tesla is making 14,000 workers redundant. In March, German sales of electric cars collapsed by 30%. You can’t give a second-hand electric car away in the U.K.
Politicians have been dreaming of vote-winning green agendas and utopian engineering and energy switches. Dreams of course, don’t need to be real. They don’t need to accommodate the needs of the consumer, the practicalities of installing colossal new infrastructure and the small matter of where all this electricity is coming from. Coal?
Flipping transportation from fossil fuels directly to electric is not like flipping a light switch. The very notion is barmy, which is why the USA predicts electric car take up by 2050 in the USA will only be 20%. In Europe, our idealists are heading towards 100%.
Ratcliffe outlines his preferred transitional design of an electric vehicle with range extender (REX): “You can charge it in the normal manner. However, tucked away under the bonnet is a small engine and a generator. The engine powers the generator, when requested, which in turn charges the battery. The engine is not connected to the pedal, so is simple, efficient and reliable.”
“Why would you ever buy a fully electric car when you have this option of an electric vehicle with a range extender and complete absence of range anxiety?” he asks.
Worth reading in full.
In the same newspaper, Matthew Lynn says “the electric car carnage has only just begun”: “Ford has just confirmed what has long been feared: that the latest quotas are punitive for U.K. consumers and a gift to China.”
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Amazing published on the same day as Labour announce their energy policy.
The BBC might as well be the media arm of the Labour Party
Propaganda Arm of the Liberal Elite. Which is why we junked our TV 20 years ago. Gets worse with every passing year.
“Ah yes science, one gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact” ——-Mark Twain. —-Jeez I really wish Mark Twain was around these days to humiliate this crowd of climate doomsters and their manipulated and adjusted data. Their phony graphs and their cherry picked facts. Their harassing of scientific journals that dare to publish anything remotely indicating there isn’t much in the way of a climate crisis at all, and their blaming of every single thing that happens as “likely due to the burning of fossil fuels”. ——-Who pays the piper calls the tune and it is sad to see that “science” has just become another government department.
Ah yes.
Our old chum Bob “fast fingers” Ward, with his super “Scientific” qualification of PhD in “Paleopiezometry” (failed).
His level of mendacity, incompetence and sheer malice makes even scum like Michael E (hockey-stick) Mann seem fractionally less egregious.
Some of us have been on to Bob Ward and his sinister employer for some time. Indeed, using libel laws has been a tactic of Grantham/Ward for some time, but it has long been the case that only the Guardian has much sympathy for Bob’s activities. He pops up on Sky News’ from time to time but he isn’t the most appealing of advocates.
Grantham is more interesting. His interest is very much in Biomass (destroying plants and trees in the fight against CO2), and that his wife is something of a green zealot and, er, photographer.
Indeed it has long been the case that it isn’t so much the billionaires that are so dangerous when it comes to the damage done by the promotion of eco-lunacy but their idiot wives, worse, ex-wives. After all it was Laurie David, ex-wife of Larry, who ‘produced’ Al Gore’s now risible ‘An Inconvenient Truth’…
Maybe DS should do an expose into ‘billionaires’ wives’
I guess she no longer photographs trees.
The BBC hails making the poor poorer. The true purpose of collectivism, socialism, communism is to hand more power to the state and create dependency.
“A similar ‘scientists’ stunt was pulled last month by Damian Carrington in the Guardian, who polled 400 so-called scientists and in an ocean of emotional guff concluded the world is heading towards a “semi dystopian” future.”
Well this Carrington quack was right on the last bit but he needs to be more assertive; he can drop the “semi.”
I hate these people.
Carrington etc are inadequate ppl who couldn’t repair a puncture on their bike but think they can reorder the energy grid/world. The true purpose of their actions is to offload their self hated and loathing on to everyone else.
If you are a scientist and don’t subscribe to any kind of alarmism you will never have the distinction of being classed as “distinguished”. You will be a “maverick”. A bit of an odd old chap due to retire to his bungalow looking over the Sussex County Cricket Ground where the sooner he gets the white hanky on his balding dome the better and let the “distinguished scientists” deal with the impending climate catastrophe that somehow requires no evidence but SSSSSHHHHHH. You don’t need evidence in Post Normal Science, all you need is a show of hands from a bunch of government funded data adjusters.
1,931 signatures of more qualified people saying “There is No Climate Emergency” at the World Climate Declaration
https://clintel.org
https://clintel.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/WCD-240529.pdf
We control things on many levels that most aren’t aware of. The forces of human mood and mind do have a profound effect on the level of moisture in the atmosphere. But these people know nothing about this. Their postulates are essentially the opposite of the truth because they are ultimately predicated on human misery.
If Blairites (such as Cameron – Clegg) can run government policy on the basis of The End of History (Fukuyama) it is a small jump to running public policy on the basis all science has been done and nothing is left to learn.
Looks like I should have gone to
Barnard CastleSpecsavers before reading the names of the ‘climate scientists’. I could have sworn ‘Karen’ was the middle name of every one of them.The notion and audacity of subjecting the nation with such BS is reprehensible & who could have exposed these charlatans better then themselves
I work (aged 79) for a company that benefits from the EV push. Therefore I benefit. Exactly the same principle applies to the signatories.
As a trained scientist/engineer and with some experience IMHO there is no scince associated with climate change, particularly the forecasts for the next 75 years. However there are a lot of politics so an pushback against the climate narrative must be a political one, hence the letter pushing one way
If I push the other way, I may lose the benefit I receive. People vote with their pocket.
The green idiots who support this nonsense are best represented by this comment (on one anti comment that the BBC had removed):
“I agree they shouldn’t open comments on this topic. All you get are right wing science deniers shouting slogans and facile misconceptions. Reform are swimming in oil money. But you wouldn’t think that matters, I’m guessing?”
I bet Nigel wishes that Reform were swimming in oil money.
It’s funny how when you quote scientific research at these people they claim you are shouting slogans.
Ha ha ha hilarious. The BBC are the biggest comedy show these days.