The Electric car agony and ecstasy - barking mad mpg claims and no subsidy
It’s being reported that the Government is considering scrapping the proposed £5,000 subsidy on electric cars.
Now there’s a headline to turn the eco-mentalists from a nice shade of green to a raging puce. It’s being reported that the new Dave ‘n’ Nick Show is considering scrapping the range of incentives available for electric cars, and in particular the £5k electric car purchase subsidy.
How dare the Government not support the barmy climate predictions and the received wisdom that global warming is man made and electric cars are the solution?
Could it be that Philip Hammond (Secretary of State for Transport) has taken one look at the likely cut of around £700 million in his department’s budget and concluded it’s not the Government’s job to subsidise an inconvenient and impractical mode of transport – the electric car – when we already have a perfectly good one – the internal combustion-engined car? If so, all we can say is – Well done Phil!
Or maybe he read the report – released this week – from the Royal Academy of Engineering on electric cars. They concluded that the UK would need to build six nuclear power stations to fuel the UK’s cars if everyone switched to electric cars. Even more pertinently they concluded that doing so would have no impact on CO2 emissions.
We’ll say that again. Electric cars have no impact on emissions. The man from the RAE said:
“Swapping gas guzzlers for electric vehicles will not solve our carbon emissions problem on its own. When most electricity in Britain is still generated by burning gas and coal, the difference between an electric car and a small, low-emission petrol or diesel car is negligible.”
Which is exactly what we’ve been saying for ever. Perhaps the new Government is a chance to unwind green policies based on climate change speculation.
And stop taxing us based on the tenet of CO2 being harmful.
Roger Dobronyi says
The Royal Academy of engineers is a fellowship and not a think tank and is peopled through invitation! That means politics! If these BRITISH engineers were so smart, why don’t they come over to the Gulf of Mexico and help BRITISH PETROLEUM clean up their mess? Maybe even chip in a few bucks. Climate change is not a religion to be belived, it is a fact. I haven’t heard the term Peak oil mentioned! How do you propose to power all your infernal combustion engines once the cheap oil depletes? Not looking for alternatives now is like waiting until you have collided with another vehicle to buckle your seat belt. It is plain to see your bread and the Royal Academy’s is buttered by corporate oil. Your denial of climate change and electric vehicles are not based on science, but on Greed!
CarsUK says
BP (it is only British Petroleum in Barak Obama’s mind) is a Global company. It has six American directors and six British. It is 40% owned by Americans and 40% British. It has more than twice as many American employees as British. The oil rig in question is owned by Transocean, an Alabama founded company quoted on NYSE which happens to have moved its HQ to Switzerland. Halliburton – a Texas based NYSE company (former CEO Dick Cheney) – designed and installed the grouting that failed in Transocean’s rig causing the spill. BP hired these guys to do a job. They failed and BP are paying the price. That’s business. But the Xenophobic rhetoric employed by the US President and politicians is shameful and will come back to bite.
Climate change is a fact. As it has been throughout time. It is not man made. And if you bothered to read Cars UK in any depth you would soon discover we are all for progress and innovation and are not remotely Luddite about anything which threatens the internal combustion engine.
victor says
Hooray, an outbreak of common sense