Founders Blog: The new Labour Government and electric cars

Richard Usher, Founder of Great British Car Journeys’ response to Keith Adams’ open letter to the new Minister for Transport, The Rt. Hon. Louise Haigh MP.

The letter can be found on AROnline here and is full of hope, that there is a great opportunity to take a fresh look at our roads.

I am very largely in agreement with Keith’s sentiments and there are some excellent thoughts and suggestions.

As a further point, I am genuinely concerned that the new government are proposing to revert the cut off date for sales of petrol and diesel cars back to 2030, the previous incumbent’s original date, which they then pushed out to 2035.

I have run an all-electric car for three years and have no problem with the concept, although I am now back to diesel, albeit one built in 2005.

My concerns over the electric future are based on the huge number of unanswered (at least to me) questions which I have asked numerous people, including MPs, without receiving much clarity by way of response.

So here they are:

1. As the battery does not appear to be a replaceable item on the current crop of electric cars, how long will a battery last before the car becomes unusable.
   
   
2. Lithium, the principle element of the modern battery is hard to extract and also hard to recycle. The average age of cars currently on the UK roads is over 9 years old. So, will batteries last that long?
   
   
3. Regardless of whether we can generate or purchase enough electricity to support what will be much higher demand, how will motorists access the necessary charging points? The number of public charging stations is already massively adrift of the targets set by the last government and so home charging would appear to be the answer? However, many millions of car owners do not have a private driveway and park their cars on the street outside their house, so how will they deal with the problem of the cable? I am already seeing streets In London which are festooned with over-pavement cables from dusk until dawn and beyond, providing a fine trip or other hazard for pedestrians. This, to me, seems to be the BIGGEST problem of them all!

So… these are my three BIG questions which, inevitably, lead to even more questions.

If anyone out there has answers with a degree of certainty, we would love to hear them!!