I saw an online story about “what if the Government are shafting the public with electric cars just like they did with diesel?”*
Set me thinking: what exactly is the point of electric cars from a pragmatic viewpoint? And: do (better off) people buy them just to virtue signal?
If you have to use a car in a ULEZ zone maybe they have a point (as long as you can find somewhere to charge it) but otherwise?
Checklist:
Save the planet? No (stopping UK pollution won’t make an iota of difference).
Save money? No (a new one will cost more than double a conventional car equivalent and cheap running costs are at the whim of Government).
More convenient? No (are you having a laugh?!).
Elegant engineering solution to a nebulous problem? (Oh please – since when was dragging 750Kgs of expensive dead weight, and rare earth minerals mined by child labour, a good idea?!)
Warm glow from being seen to be “doing my bit to help the Greens”? YES, that’s it (you are a CUNT with too much money!)
Nominated by: Mikdys
Personally, I think it’s just another stupid idea thst the gov’t has latched onto and it’s ‘full speed ahead’ if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s like HS2 – they got sold on the idea and won’t be turned – doesn’t matter if it doesn/t stack up or half of it’s been shelved. Cost 20x original £estimate – just carry on.
I’m no expert, but I think the answer is hydrogen fuel cells – you can retain tried and tested combustion engine technology but clean burning and only emissions are oxygen and water vapour. (I read a theory that a design for hydrogen car engines was developed in the 70’s but the Saudi’s bought it and have sat on it as they wanted to protect and maintain their oil monopoly)
The simple fact is when petrol & diesel engine use is banned and the Gov’t lose £Billions in tax revenue from fuel sales, they’ll put huge taxes on the electricty used to charge car batteries and say it’s to pay for all the infrastructure investment in the elec network, charging points and battery eco recycling.
They’ve got this dream notion that the UK will be the world leader in electric vehicle design and car sales. The Japanese, Koreans and Chinese will be making better, cheaper cars 10 years before we get our act together.
I love my country but it is NOT an industrial powerhouse 🙁
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That’s exactly it – the politicians have decided on the matter and cast down a commandment in a tablet of stone from on high.
No debate about how it will address a problem (it won’t – the UK could shut down tomorrow and global emissions will carry on rising).
No debate about whether it’s pragmatic (it’s not – drivers can’t sit on their hands for four hours every time they need to refuel).
No debate about whether it’s affordable for the masses (it’s not – electric cars are eye watering my expensive). It’s like the antithesis of the original idea behind VW, an affordable car for the people (I realise the Germans never actually delivered this but it was the idea behind it). No, the UK will have “unaffordable cars to get the plebs out of them!”
What is the real plan behind it though? An electric car charge uses as much electricity as the average house does in a week. There are 29 million homes in the U.K. and 37 million cars. If 37 million cars were electric it would be like (if cars are recharged every 2 weeks) another 19 million homes plugged into the grid. There don’t seem to be any plans to increase power production/the grid by 64%. There appears to be a plan to throttle grid supplies via smart meters and also to pull power back out of vehicle batteries at peak times (losing 15% each way due to “inverter losses” – you really couldn’t make this sh1t up). But even these measures won’t make up for the grid shortfall from a country full of electric cars. I can only conclude that the politicians plan to whittle the UK car parc down from 37 million to??? (5-10 million maybe). In other words remove personal transport from the plebs.
Watch out these cunts are planning to take YOUR car off the road in the very near future.
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Not an expert? I disagree in as far as I agree with everything you say. The government got it wrong with Diesel and did a U turn 30 years later after finally finding out that it belches out cancer causing pollutants. The construction of ecars use resources that have to be imported from at least 30 countries all over the world, and one of those sources will be afghanistan if demand gets higher. The lifespan of an ecar will be much shorter than a normal pollutant as technology will be upgraded, and older cars won’t be supported, so they will be nothing more than scrap value. And there is the age old question of where the electricity comes from to power these wankers on their way to work as an accountant, teacher or banker. 73% of of electricty is still generated via fossil fuels, so the smug wankers think they are saving the planet and they aren’t, they are the bigger problem because the are blinded by media pressure. On a side note Russia have become an economic powerhouse due to supplying gas to most of europe. Now the chinese are funding our new nuclear power station, while we spend billions on the HS2 which won’t be used and eventually sold off at a loss (probably to the french like our water companies). How fucked up is that? I know we aren’t the powerhouse we once were, but politicians are selling us down the river, and I can see a future where our offspring have to emigrate to Poland to make a decent wage and not fund fat politician’s downing street parties.
And for the record I said Russia would invade Ukraine, and they did. I said our governement would do nothing, and they did not disappoint me. Seriously, they sanctioned 5 minor banks (imagine Russia sanctioning the cheltenham a gloucester building society, that gives you idea of scale) and they took the chequebook off some oligarchs who would not stand up to putin anyway, in case he poisons them. Russia has been squirelling away its nut anyway economically, they deinvesred from the dollae and bought more gold and euros so they aren’t worried about sanctions. Ukraine will be taken with impunity
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Teslas must be the ugliest vehicles on the road. Their ever-so-aerodynamic wheels look like fuck-knows-what,and don’t start me off as regards the soulless bland interior.
They cost the Earth yet are designed for poor people i.e those who can’t afford to fill up with diesel.
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I can’t really think of a car that I find remotely attractive any more. Successive rebuilds have fucked about everything up. The Mini now looks ugly, as does various spin-offs, all look as if they’ve been rear-end shunted. The Mazda MX5 has seen better days… Oddly, I find the Beetle quite successful, but I won’t buy a Reichsmobile on a matter of principle.
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When I looked seriously into buying an electric car a few years back the first question I was asked was “if I want to rent the battery or buy it?”
That put me off in an instant…..in my car I do not rent the fucking engine.
It may be different now but that put me off for good and with spiking energy bills because we depend on foreign cunts for our energy, I bet they do not work out cheaper either.
Fuck electric cars, they can eat my cock.
7
Listen folks,
Let’s all stop busting a gut and fretting over electric cars – make that electric vehicles.
I you’re currently thinking of treating yourself to a new car – go and get a nice petrol car. It’ll do you for a good few years (there will always be a plentiful supply of petrol – and not necessarily extortionately expensive). By the time you need to change again, the fucking “green” electric car shit will be long forgotten.
It ain’t going to happen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All it will take is for just one of the big manufacturers to stick their heads above the parapet and tell it like it – dispelling all the hype that we hear – and the dominoes will tumble. At the moment they are all waiting for someone else to do it first, scared shitless to be the first and following the fucking stupid government/brain-dead ,do-gooder narrative. I just hope I am around to see it!
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Spot on Cassandra! My view precisely. I realised a couple of years ago now that for several rock solid reasons electric cars are never going to be sold to anyone outside that section of the lunatic fringe which has more money than sense. My V6 petrol burner had its twentieth birthday this month, 117,000 on the clock, never failed an MOT and is still good for baiting low end BMWs. The extra I pay in fuel and road tax doesn’t even approach what I would have to pay for a more economical modern car, let alone the comical prices of electric toys. And the best thing is I buy insurance for peanuts ‘cos I’m seventy years old, HaHa!
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P.S. and I don’t even have to pay Suckdick’s “low emission” tax!
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