The sales of electric cars have rocketed. In 2020 they accounted for 10.7% of all car sales. Last year (not including ours cos WE STILL HAVEN’T GO IT!!!) it was up to 23% of total car sales. During the same period, the number of public charging points has grown by 6. But 2 of those don’t actually work. So its nice to see that the government, who tell us we MUST buy electric cars, who are going to ban new petrol cars by 2030, really getting behind their own plans for greener, healthier, less polluted cities and motorways.

Electric car drivers suffer from ‘range anxiety’. It can be treated with drugs but they can only be used to send you high as a kite once you’ve actually run completely out of charge, down a back lane with no streetlights, somewhere in Hertfordshire. Might as well take a couple’a these and then you won’t give a shit. Whilst you wait for help. Though what that ‘help’ will look like I don’t know. Possibly a man with a charger on a 14 mile long cable plugged in on the Essex border? A lorry with a 20 foot high battery on the back? Who knows. You’re certainly without a paddle.

On Sunday we went to Leeds for a funeral. My brother-in-law drove up too. In a petrol car. Even though he has a brand new, all-electric, super-plug-in, green-flagged Volvo Thunberg in his garage. But why?? Ecology aside, you save a hundred quid taking the ‘lectric. Its silent. Its fab. Its green. Its everything. But that’s only if you venture out less than about 270 miles from your home charger. If the round trip is 400 miles then ya have to think about it. Worry about it. Get anxiety attacks about it. Suffer… range anxiety!!!!!

His car is quoted as 270 miles on a full charge. But that is because car manufacturers are as economical with the truth regarding electric car range as they were with ‘fuel consumption’ (see: everyone vs Volkswagen, 2016, 17, 18, 19…) on diesel ones. So 270 miles, once you add the ‘reality factor’ becomes 220 miles. Turn on the heater (it was -3 on Sunday) and that drops to 165 miles. Should it rain and the wipers get deployed, that comes down to 92 miles. Don’t use the radio, just sing. So he might make it one way, to Leeds, but then what? Public chargers few, far-between and working at about 40% of them actually working. Though there is a new charger, somewhere in Yorkshire, but that’s scant benefit.

Whilst I’m waiting for my new electric motor car, I’m in training. I keep the old petrol car with the fuel light on. Red and flashing. And that’s when I go on my journeys. To learn what that ‘range anxiety’ is going to feel like.

So all praise the government. Those not currently under some inquiry or other.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx