Electric vehicles are the beta max of transportation – the government should scrap the all-electric deadline to avoid economic catastrophe

ONLY seven years remain until all new vehicles sold in the UK must be electric.

For you and me, 2030 may seem a long way off, but for the automotive industry – which plans years ahead – the remaining 2,550+ days is a blink of an eye.

2

2

Vehicle manufacturers, which employ 800,000 people in the UK, typically work at least five years ahead.

Which means 2023 may be the last year that the mad decision to push the UK into a battery-powered vehicle disaster can be scrapped.

Events over the Christmas holidays have shown that the UK is far from ready to go fully electric.

At Gretna Welcome Break Services, dozens of Tesla drivers trying to get to and from Scotland over the bank holidays queued for three hours just to start charging.

A brother and sister had to stop SIX times in one day to charge their rental Tesla because the battery drained so quickly in cold weather.

Elsewhere, there were even fights in front of supermarkets and restaurants for access to charging points.

Astronomical Cost

And this week, the Swiss Efficiency Model is considering banning electric vehicles — EVs — in a bid to conserve the country’s energy supply.

Yet our dictatorial government continues to ignore overwhelming evidence that electric vehicles are fast becoming the beta max of transportation.

The latest FairFuelUK survey of 27,000 motorists who currently drive diesel or petrol vehicles shows the tsunami of green praise and love of electric vehicles is fading fast.

Full results will be released in the coming weeks, but here’s a preview.

Just over half – 51 percent – say they will stick with petrol or diesel and not buy a new electric vehicle.

Meanwhile, 35 per cent will buy a hybrid vehicle before the 2030 deadline, when sales of new petrol or diesel vehicles end in the UK.

But just one in ten – 11 percent – say they will switch to an electric vehicle when that deadline comes, while three percent don’t yet know what they will do.

Of those who support EVs, 86 percent say they drive less than 100 miles at a time, so charging their vehicle’s battery is not a major concern.

Worrying for the Tories and Labor, according to the FairFuelUK poll, two in three intend to vote for the party that will lift the 2030 ban.

So far, Reform UK is the only party to declare the end of the 2030 ban.

How can the politicians of the mainstream parties with their green-tinted glasses ignore the facts about electric vehicles and the 2030 deadline?

Producing a “pure” battery-powered vehicle emits more CO2 than an equivalent fossil-fuelled car — in some cases up to 74 percent more, according to Berryls Strategy Advisors.

Also, as we saw over Christmas, the UK doesn’t have nearly enough charging points.

The EV Energy Taskforce says the UK will need between 253,000 and 661,000 more charging points for electric vehicles by 2035 to achieve the phase-out of petrol and diesel.

At the moment we have less than 40,000.

Unless the national grid’s capacity is expanded by tens of gigawatts, there will not be enough power to handle the projected growth in battery electric vehicle ownership and to sustain anything like our currently prized freedom of movement.

The cost of expanding the generation capacity of the national grid to include local grids and charging points that can accommodate the planned EV explosion would be almost astronomical.

And don’t forget that experts at economics consultancy CEBR recently estimated that the cost of banning EVs by 2030 and rolling them out is five times the purported environmental benefits.

Therefore, expanding the national electricity grid to support the planned fleet of battery electric vehicles may need to be subsidized through inflated household electricity bills or through general taxes.

Meanwhile, Britain’s biggest gigawatt battery maker for electric cars, Britishvolt, could slide into bankruptcy, taking with it thousands of future jobs in the North East.

More taxpayer money may be needed to keep it afloat, even after mining giant Glencore stepped up cash to keep this electric vehicle battery start-up out of administration.

Time is running out

And a report by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence – experts in the supply chain from batteries to electric vehicles – estimates that at least 384 new mines for commodities such as graphite, lithium, nickel and cobalt will be needed to meet global demand for electric vehicles by 2035.

So we need to start investing in domestic mines today. Add to this the cost of dismantling the current fuel distribution system and the potential loss of local jobs.

Many gas stations are becoming a “stranded asset” as they likely do not have enough space to accommodate vehicles that may be charged for several hours or overnight.

Electric vehicles must not be the only choice to preserve our precious driving freedom.

Even Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda says his industry doesn’t believe electric vehicles can ever replace diesel and gasoline vehicles as the “single-energy option” of road transport.

It’s not too late to scrap Britain’s 2030 ban and run the world with financial common sense instead of economic Armageddon – but time is running out.