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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