13 January 2024

Electric Vehicles – Control of Public Mobility?

 

If one goes to the UK Parliament website www.parliament.uk and searches for the first passenger railway you’ll find that this was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1826.[1]  The South Eastern Railway Act was passed ten years later in 1836.

The website goes on to explain that the advent of rail led to “significant changes in British society”. A contemporary study compared the road and rail journeys between the two cities and concluded that road transport could not compete with the railways.  The journey took 4 hours by road, whereas the rail journey was one and three-quarters hours.  The expansion of railways overtook road and canal travel as being the “go to” transport system for coal/food and other necessities.

Later on in the fifties, road transport improved, motorways or trunk roads were built to take heavier lorries from city-to-city.  This allowed for goods to move quickly and freely from point of production/import, to the final destination.  So, whilst power stations, steel works and the like, used the railways to transport coal/ore and other dense raw materials, the roads took on the job of transporting goods to the heart of the cities and towns around the country.

Also in the fifties air transport became more accessible to the general public.  The development of larger, jet powered aircraft permitted goods and passengers to be transported swiftly from country to country; and, continent to continent.

As time moved on these transport systems evolved; the railways became less passenger friendly as the cost rose, but road transport, in particular cars, became the transport of choice for people who had freedom to determine their way of life.  And this is where it comes to a screeching halt because we don’t have those freedoms anymore, we are told that we can’t choose our mode of  transportation, but must bow to those who think they “know better” and thus restrict our movements and drive (if we can afford to) an electric vehicle (EV). 

So, let’s look at EVs:

First thing to do is decide if you want to be able to travel longer distances or you will simply be commuting to town or the railway station on a daily basis, with the odd short trip at weekends.  If the former you need, as a minimum, a range of two-hundred and fifty miles.  And you must bear in mind that this range is 80% of battery capacity because you can’t keep charging to one hundred per cent for fear of damaging the batteries.  So, to achieve this you will need to spend upwards of £60k.  It is noted that the government’s discount excluded cars over £40k so immediately we were encouraged to select a lesser range vehicle.  Thus, if you are thinking of the latter requirements then you can opt for a 40k car with an 80% range of around 150 miles.  We will return to range later. 

As one who owned an EV with a stated range of 300+ miles I can tell you that it only ever achieved that once.  The average range on 100 per cent was closer to 280 miles and that was when the ambient temperature was 20o.  Then we come to winter and that range just dies.  In order to get at least a sensible distance in winter, the heater is switched off and the heated steering wheel and seats are employed, both of which also drain the range and have to be switched off.  I have a 1965 MGB classic car, the heater is pretty inefficient but it at least provides some comfort and using it doesn’t materially reduce my range.  So, in order to travel we have to go back to pre-1965!  Not exactly progress is it?

Whilst I could get into the moral arguments surrounding the rare earth minerals and their mining, I’ll leave that for someone else.  What I will say though, is that EVs are not all bad; they are quiet and  comfortable, they can be very quick if you want to upset the odd Porsche and Ferrari driver and our dog loved mine.  But due to the batteries EVs are necessarily over sized and thus not particularly efficient (small load carrying capacity), hence the smaller EVs generally have no range to speak of.  Furthermore unless you can charge them using wind or solar power, they aren’t green (but arguably, neither is wind and solar in reality due to the materials needed for turbines etc.).  They are just as carbon loaded to manufacture as an ICE vehicle.

Why did I sell mine?  I loved it for the reasons of comfort, I could heat it up on the mains charger before leaving home in winter (very important for battery life).  Having that charger installed at home meant I was never worried about getting away.  But, on the occasions I tried to use a public charger, they were either blocked by cars whose owners had parked for what appeared to be the day, or they didn’t work!  Fortunately on those occasions I didn’t need to charge the car to get home.  However, those in apartment blocks, or terraced houses on inner city streets, have no choice.  The upshot is that in my eighteen months of ownership I never once used a public charger.

In conclusion, I suggest that far from being an improvement in mobility, as was provided by railways, roads and air travel, this latest modernisation of our transport system is in fact a means of reducing mobility and controlling our lives.

Peter Mallett

03 March 2023



[1] https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/transportcomms/roadsrail/kent-case-study/introduction/railways-in-early-nineteenth-century-britain/#:~:text=The%20first%20purpose%20built%20passenger,Act%20of%20Parliament%20in%201826.

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