I’m going to test drive a Tesla. I received an offer from a newspaper we subscribe to so why the hell not. I don’t want one, I certainly can’t afford one, but heh, what’s not to gain by driving what is a somewhat magical car. The new one. The big, 4-door saloon. Which, with ne’er a dram of petrol, can accelerate from 0-60 in just over 3 seconds and travel over 300 miles on one tank of… errr… one tank of electric.

Its all part of the ‘electric car awareness’ campaign that the government are obsessing about. And if I’m honest (something I try never to be) I reckon that within a couple of generations all cars will be electric and ‘vintage’ gassers will have an app showing them where the 6 remaining petrol stations in the country can be located. A litre of unleaded will cost £1,753.62p (though at Asda, just £1,753.59!!!).

Petrol is unsustainable. Its dirty. It pollutes. Diesel is worse. Used to be better, but they changed its status just a year or so ago to ‘much worse’.

When I was a little boy I used to hitch a ride up the road on the milkman’s little truck. Or ‘milk float’ as we curiously called them. Sounds like a drink. But it wasn’t. It was a little electric powered vehicle that went up to about 15 mph and lasted all morning on one charge. That was back in the early 60s.

Flash forward 50 years (though half a century struggles with ‘flash’) and someone transferred ‘all that technology’ into a Gee-Wizz. A commuter car designed specifically to beat London’s congestion charge. Electric cars were exempt, let’s make one. Needs to be small. And light. Otherwise the batteries will die. Hmmmm. Better make it fibreglass then, with as little metal as possible and give it a range of about 35 miles or else the weight of the battery will be more than the car itself. Great. It was almost as strong as balsa wood. Almost. One minor bumper tap and YOUR ARE DEAD.

So there are hybrids. Hateful things made by Toyota/Lexus. They pretend to be electric so they can avoid the tenner a day London entry fee for vehicles, but they’re not. On electricity alone they go very very slowly for very short distances. Then the ‘proper’ engine cuts in, goes fast, carries on for miles, but pollutes just like every other car.

Always the same problem. Batteries. They’re heavy and bulky. Which is why your phone lives 23 hours a day on its charger. In a car the more batteries you have the further you can go but the heavier it becomes. Which drains the power, reduces the range. Hmmmmm.

Tesla are the only cars that are fully electric and yet perform brilliantly AND have a decent range between charges. The £100,000 BMW i8 can only manage about 25 miles on battery alone. What fucking use it that?

So now they’ve come up with a plan. Electrify the motorways. Not to kill stray cattle and refugees, but to charge cars as they drive along. It is brilliant (I love it when people face BIG problems and create solutions, its wonderfully reassuring. Even if it needs a few goes to get it right). Buried cables under the road (won’t cause too much disruption, digging up every motorway) create an electro-magnetic field which can be picked up by receivers in cars to charge their batteries as they whizz along. How fucking amazingly brilliant is that?

Minor problems. Its screws up the cars ‘electronics’. And as all cars are basically computers now, this is a problem not quite so ‘minor’. I didn’t ask what it might do to things like pacemakers. Best not to question. And it would cost a mind-blowing £17million per kilometre. You know you’re in trouble when they’re quoting in metric. I make that about 8 billion quid for the M1 alone.

If only someone could invent an easier form of power. Maybe a liquid that you could store in a tank in a vehicle which could run the motor for miles and miles.

But you gotta keep trying. Its for the planet.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx