If the Conservatives are hoping to get re-elected next year they may have to rethink their policy of banning the sale of new petrol- or diesel-powered cars by 2030. Electric cars are proving to be an unmitigated disaster. Indeed, scarcely a day passes without a story appearing in the Telegraph about just how terrible they are – and not just if you want to get from A to B.
For instance, we learnt last week that some electric cars are losing their value twice as quickly as petrol alternatives.
Drivers have been pushed towards electric cars by a string of government initiatives, which are intended to help the country become “net zero” by 2050. However, drivers going green risk losing thousands of pounds more than those who stick with petrol.
Some popular electric models have fallen in price at twice the rate of petrol cars. A driver who bought an electric BMW i3 in 2020 would have paid £39,000 and could sell the car for £13,900 today, a depreciation of 64%.
However, the petrol equivalent has maintained much more of its original value. A new petrol-powered BMW 3 series cost £32,000 on average three years ago but would sell for £22,360 now – a drop of just 30%.
Yesterday brought more bad news.
First, we discovered that thousands of free electric car chargers have been pulled from Britain’s roads over the past year as soaring energy costs makes them unaffordable.
The number of chargers offering free electricity has fallen from 5,715 a year ago to 3,568, a drop of almost 40%.
They now make up less than one in 10 public chargers on Britain’s roads, compared to one in five a year ago.
The drop in free top-up charging spots is the latest blow to the Government’s ambitions to attract motorists to electric cars by making it cheap and convenient to charge them away from home.
Then we learnt that because electric cars can weigh 33% more than wet cars, much of our basic transport infrastructure – such as multi-story car parks and bridges – may well collapse under their additional weight.
Last month, car park experts raised concerns about the ability of some ageing car parks ability to handle the weight as the number of electric vehicles grew.
Russell Simmons, chair of the British Parking Association’s structures group, told The Telegraph that he had carried out inspections of multi-storey car parks in the UK over the last six months which would not have been able to withstand new EV weights.
Electric vehicles are generally heavier than petrol counterparts because of the weight of their batteries, which can weigh around 500kg.
Earlier this year, Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, found that the best-selling EVs in the U.S. were on average 33% heavier than petrol counterparts.
To summarise, electric car owners have discovered in the past week alone that their cars may lose their value twice as quickly as non-electric vehicles, that free charging points are rapidly disappearing from our roads and if they park their Tesla in a multi-story carpark it might well collapse. Who knew virtue-signalling would prove to be so costly?
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.
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Indeed one should be under no illusions.
However it’s arguable that the USA treats its own citizens better than Russia does its own citizens – rule of law is stronger, and basic freedoms are better protected. The same could be said for other liberal democracies (though any advantage we have is fading fast, accelerated by the covid folly and evil). I’m not arguing however that this justifies actions this alliance takes around the world to protect its interests, just that it could be argued it’s perhaps less immoral to do business with the USA than it is with Russia – but then is it less immoral to do business with China, or Saudi Arabia?
…just that it could be argued it’s perhaps less immoral to do business with the USA than it is with Russia – but then is it less immoral to do business with China, or Saudi Arabia?
Try telling the US not to do business with those three countries and it would laugh in your face. Lots of thing could be argued, but sometimes it’s best not to bother.
Conquest and plunder. Twas ever thus.
Also note that the USA spent about $2T on the war — at least a fair proportion of this money went to all sorts of dubious entities in the USA. The population of the USA will be paying for this for decades (probably via inflation).
The UK is similar (except that the money spent also goes to all sorts of dubious entities in the USA).
Correct. After 20 years of occupation, Afghans are no better off, and Western tax-payers are worse off. The main parties who benefited are Western defence contractors and Afghan warlords.
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that Western defence contractors benefited.
There would have been business in certain consumables but those would have had, in any case, a limited shelf life.
The increase in defence spending by the U.S. over the last twenty years has resulted, predominantly, from renewed tensions with Russia and China. Defence Companies were required to produce enhanced capability systems, the effectiveness of which are now being seen in the drubbing dished out every day to Russian forces in Ukraine
The war in Iraq also played a role, much more so than the war in Afghanistan, but the big five contractors didn’t make a lot of money from the fighting—most of which was conducted with drones, helicopters, armoured vehicles, and rifles.
Most of the money spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were for personnel, training, and health care.
Also note that the U.S. voters were right behind their government in making the intervention in Afghanistan.
And British voters were right behind their government in assisting the U.S.
Pretty much everything which is said about Russia can be said about Ukraine. It was corrupt and authoritarian, firing missiles and artillery shells into civilian areas in the East of the country prior to Feb 2022. The scale and destruction is bigger now, but Ukraine is far from being innocent if you take into account their tactics confirmed by Amnesty Int. There is also plenty of evidence of civilians saying that Ukrainian troops apart from positioning their military equipment in the residential areas also prevented evacuation and even firing directly at and killing people. So this quoted report by UN shouldn’t be taken uncritically. Especially that opinions of the majority of international organizations are far from unbiased and skewed heavily to the US/West point of view bar some rare exceptions, like said AI report. If Russia are not the good guys, end of story, then you can’t explain why people cross the border to the Russian controlled territory as recent CNN video unwillingly revealed.
This is not to dispute that civilians are dying from Russian shelling which is of course a tragedy. It just gives a bit more colors to the black and white picture which is being painted by every MSM outlet and even DS, apart from odd articles of Noah Carl (kudos for that).
‘US standing up to Russia’ idea is seriously flawed. US is not fighting Russia risking destruction and deaths of its own citizens. What it does rather is selling weapons to Ukraine and NATO members on an unimaginable scale. It also got European LPG market all for itself now.
But it’s a lot harder to control the masses if you don’t prevent them from seeing things in anything other than black and white…
The problem I see is in the use of typical phrases like “the US is good”, “Russia are rhe bad guys” and “the US is the richest country in the world”.
The actions of the US government or the US military are actions decided by a small group.of people. Same goes for Russia.
These wars and conflicts are fights between the ruling elites of countries into which the populations are dragged in to be played like chips on a casino table.
Leaders rile us up and drag us in. Biut in the end all the spoils go to the elites and the cost paid by the suckered population.
That is how it has always been.
Regarding the US being the richest nation in the world, I don’t even know what that means. Iit’s governemnt certainly has the biggest debt in the world. Are the people the richest? I don’t know.
This bundling of millions of people into simple catch all phrases for the purpose of making things more readable and understandable perpetuate a sense that nations are.monolothic in their actions and responsibilities. And they just aren’t.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220810-economists-urge-us-to-return-afghanistan-s-frozen-assets
“We are deeply concerned by the compounding economic and humanitarian catastrophes unfolding in Afghanistan, and, in particular, by the role of US policy in driving them,” 71 economists and development experts said in a letter to US President Joe Biden and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
“Without access to its foreign reserves, the central bank of Afghanistan cannot carry out its normal, essential functions,” they wrote.
we should not forget Syria where US occupies oil rich parts of the country.
https://mronline.org/2022/08/16/u-s-troops-loot-84-oil-tankers-from-syria-smuggle-them-into-iraq/
Yes there is a lot of evidence from various sources. The USA invade, occupy and plunder…..but apparently they are the good guys?. I think less and less people are buying it…..
I’d hope that people did their own research, but you can’t underestimate propaganda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trpiChRRnZE
Irish MEP Clare Daly: Multilateralism Means Like-Minded Partners Forming A Club…
Let us not forget that the United States Armed Forces, in alliance with this country, participated in the defeat of Germany in both World Wars and that of Japan in the second of those wars.
The people of Kuwait have also not forgotten their liberation by a coalition led by the USA in 1991.
Kosovo would not exist without the USAF.
Nation States, national governments, have no principles as we have seen over the last two years.
Democracy: the least worst form of government.
As cynical as it may sound, there really are NO good guys, just varying shades of evil it seems.
Did the Taleban really expect to get all that top-class, 21st century weapony for nothing?
‘there can be no justification for firing missiles and artillery shells into civilian areas, racking up thousands of casualties’
Noah, you should watch UK Column news. There you would hear, from the many independent sources they access, that Ukraine has purposely been using civilian buildings (eg schools, hospitals) and areas so that Russia has been forced to aim at them. And the figures about civilians being killed are not what they seem. I am sure you can’t be believing the MSM figures and reporting. You need to watch UK Column’s news on a regular basis to get an objective and true picture. I am by no means saying that Putin is an angel of light, but things aren’t what they seem. And Ukraine has committed just the atrocities you mention against the Donbas region for many years (since 2014 at least). As well as other stuff.