Taking up my true role as the Luddite I am, and knowing that whatever I think about it, an electric vehicle lies just around the corner (possibly waiting for someone to work out how to charge it up) I decided that it was about time I took a look at electric cars…

Now, I know that petrol cars are far from perfect: they are smelly, they are noisy and they are poisoning the atmosphere, but, you know, so are politicians and we’re nowhere near phasing them out, are we?  I mean, come on, let’s have some balance here, what’s the problem with Mass Extinction as long as I can take the kids to school without getting my slippers wet?  Be honest, most of the things that look cute or magnificent on TV will, if encountered face to face, either eat you, sting you or shit on your new white shirt.  If my car runs out of petrol at the moment, at least I can push the bloody thing, or walk off down to the petrol station and come back with a can of unleaded.  Try doing that with 240 volts. 

If you live in a country – as we are fortunate to do – where an ever-growing percentage of our energy needs are produced from renewable sources, then electric cars definitely score, but if you’re from somewhere that still produces the majority of its electricity from coal and gas, then – well, unless I’ve got this all completely wrong –  you’re still going to be powering your car with carbon that has been dug from the ground somewhere.  Just putting that one extra wholesaler between yourself and the oil well doesn’t keep the shit out of the atmosphere.  Not to mention the sound pollution (formerly known as ‘sound’.)  I suppose it is one of the few good things about growing old that, as far as I’m concerned, my old petrol car is every bit as quiet as a modern EV.

Here in the UK we have lots and lots of roads and most journeys take hours only because they are all so clogged up with fellow-wrinklies doing 20mph in giant SUV’s which still have the plastic sheeting on the back seats, but the actual distances between places are small.  Getting there and back on a single charge, however, in an electric car is seldom possible.  How, I wonder, would you proceed in a country like Canada?  You get on the Freeway and drive for, let’s say about three hours, before having to find somewhere to plug the car in whilst keeping one eye open for bears.  Ah, did I say somewhere to plug it in?  Of course, you see electric sockets all along the roads, don’t you?  (The answer, of course, unless you live in London, is ‘No.’)  You can’t even pull up on somebody’s drive, slip ‘em a tenner and ask them to plug you in: normal domestic sockets take about three and a half years to charge the average EV.  Plug in your family hatchback in the middle of nowhere and you’re likely to dim the lights across an entire county.

Having scoured the SatNav (reducing the car’s range by about a mile per minute) for suitable charging points you may, if you are lucky, find one that is no more than thirty minutes out of your way, where you will be able to add sufficient charge to get you home.  Approximately forty-five minutes on a super-fast charger – a sure-fire way to bugger up your battery – at approximately twice the price of normal speed chargers (because nobody wants to sit a minute longer than they absolutely have to in a service station) during which time you can drink coffee that both costs the same and tastes exactly like petrol, and eat carrot cake that may well have just been dug up, is all it takes.  A standard 7kw fast charger will take 8 hours to fill your battery, so if you can only find one of those, you’d better hope that it’s attached to a motel.  (In fact EV batteries should only be charged up to 80% capacity as charging to 100% degrades them, meaning that you begin to get less miles per charge.  Why they don’t make batteries that only charge to 80%, I don’t know.  I presume that, like world peace, female emancipation and food for all, they’re working on it.)

I would like to know why, given that (I presume) EV’s use the battery to power the heater, the radio and the lights, all electric cars seem to be festooned with the kind of wattage that, on a dark night, would probably knock the vehicle’s range down to a few hundred metres.  I know that batteries have a much shorter range in cold weather.  Turn on the lights and the heater in a sharp frost and you will be lucky to make it off the drive.

There are, of course, huge advantages to driving an EV: imagine driving to your in-laws and telling them that you will have to charge your car – at their expense – in order to make it back home.  They may never invite you back again.

Now, I have just bought a new house with a charging point fitted, so I feel as though I would be an idiot not to use it.  Obviously the move to electric vehicle has to be done, doesn’t it?  The sun, the wind and the tides are always there – although, having said that, given time I’m sure we’ll find a way of buggering those up to – and our huge thirst for energy means that we are currently choking the planet with the carbon we are releasing from where nature had hidden it.  Pretty soon there will be only a very few pockets of natural flora and fauna left to visit, but at least when your plane lands on the way to see them, you’ll be able to rely on an electric vehicle to take you the rest of the way there – although not necessarily to bring you back again…

If you know me, you will know that (most of) this was written with tongue firmly in cheek.  If you don’t, then where have you been?  We’re almost a thousand posts in now and you have missed the opportunity to be offended by almost every single one of them.  Strap in and log on: I’m a married man, I’m perfectly prepared to be told how wrong I am…