Their new crowd-funded #StopBurningStuff campaign will work counter the raft of misinformation being peddled by some MPs and mainstream media.
The campaign, which is backed by scientists, climate ambassadors and senior industry, will establish a team to correct the onslaught of misinformation in a factually accurate and fair way – countering what they describe as oddities and inaccuracies with truth, facts and honesty.
The launch of the #StopBurningStuff project follows weeks of hate campaigns against EVs – such as The Sun’s ‘five point plan to protect drivers from a rush to net zero’ which included a call for the 2030 phase-out on new diesel and petrol cars and vans to be “delayed until the nation is prepared”.
I like cars. I love a good V8 and I equally love a good electric car.
There are two main issues with an electric vehicle in terms of total adoption. The availability of chargers, and vehicle weight.
I don’t mind a 45 minute charging time on a long journey, but what would be a problem is rocking up to a broken charger or one with several vehicles ahead of me.
Time should fix the first problem for me as chargers roll out in more locations. Home charging will be a difficult problem to solve with terraced housing unless we put chargers next to every space that you log into to charge as though at home. That will be a substantial investment.
The second problem, weight, would require some, not all, roads to be rebuilt from foundations upwards as they’re designed for most vehicles to be half the weight they will be.
That is resolvable again with substantial investment.
The problem this investment requirement brings is that while motorists pay many multiples of the entire road transport bill in taxes already, that money is spent elsewhere.
So what spending will the government cut to make this transition work? It’s going to have to be something big because the money needs reallocating today if we’re going to meet the 2030 goal.
We cannot meet the goal by just hoping some Deus Ex Machina event arrives and delivers it. It needs finding and planning and execution. Doing what we’re doing will end up forcing the poorest drivers off the roads.
If car charging gets subsidised, how long before someone comes up with a way to use this “cheaper” electricity for different purposes?
What, exactly, is “cultural” about plugging your car in a socket at home instead of at a pump in a petrol station?
> StopBurningStuff
I’m not sure this combative angle is the best idea. It risks them coming off as spoiling the fun and being preachy. ICE cars are fun. People have fond memories of them. They’ve also come a long way in reducing the emissions they emit. Getting on a high horse and telling people to “stop burning stuff” is not going to get them on side. It’s more complex than that given the high cost of entry and limited infrastructure of EVs still.
Electric cars have a lot of genuine advantages. They’re quieter, often faster, mechanically simpler, cheaper to run, and driving modes can give back some of that agency that more old fashioned enthusiasts might miss.
There’s a genuine argument to be made of “we should move to electric cars because they’re just better”, instead of it being a guilt trip over carbon emissions
I think manufacturers are already going to do the heavy lifting here though. More and more are throwing their weight behind EVs and pouring millions into marketing campaigns to make said cars desirable. It was easy to make fun of EVs when they were silly looking Toyotas driven by hippies, less so when all the Mercedes on the road are electric.
The scary part is this “The campaign, which is backed by scientists, climate ambassadors and senior industry,”
Some scientists get it very wrong, there is also bad science. It was ‘scientists’ who told us to get cleaner diesels 15 years ago to get the old bangers off the road when we had the scrappage scheme. So using it as an appeal to authority is very wrong. The Climate ambassadors and senior industry will also have an agenda and bias.
If they just let a free market happen, and electric is better the market will change all by its self. For some things like local delivery vans electric does make much more sense, as ICE with starter motors wear out quickly.
The infrastructure is not there yet for mass adoption, but everyone should be free to pick the option of petrol, diesel, hybrid or electric when they pick a car whichever is the best for their situation. If electric gets better people will buy it.
I’d still like some actual data on things like what 30million vehicles being charged every evening would be in terms of power generation requirements and how that energy would be generated. Aswell as the overall cost to the environment for the lithium etc mining and finally what they plan to do in regards to travel range if you end up stuck in an traffic jam due to an accident (especially if its cold/wet/dark) with a few hundred EVs for hours that could end up running out of battery.
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Their new crowd-funded #StopBurningStuff campaign will work counter the raft of misinformation being peddled by some MPs and mainstream media.
The campaign, which is backed by scientists, climate ambassadors and senior industry, will establish a team to correct the onslaught of misinformation in a factually accurate and fair way – countering what they describe as oddities and inaccuracies with truth, facts and honesty.
The launch of the #StopBurningStuff project follows weeks of hate campaigns against EVs – such as The Sun’s ‘five point plan to protect drivers from a rush to net zero’ which included a call for the 2030 phase-out on new diesel and petrol cars and vans to be “delayed until the nation is prepared”.
I like cars. I love a good V8 and I equally love a good electric car.
There are two main issues with an electric vehicle in terms of total adoption. The availability of chargers, and vehicle weight.
I don’t mind a 45 minute charging time on a long journey, but what would be a problem is rocking up to a broken charger or one with several vehicles ahead of me.
Time should fix the first problem for me as chargers roll out in more locations. Home charging will be a difficult problem to solve with terraced housing unless we put chargers next to every space that you log into to charge as though at home. That will be a substantial investment.
The second problem, weight, would require some, not all, roads to be rebuilt from foundations upwards as they’re designed for most vehicles to be half the weight they will be.
That is resolvable again with substantial investment.
The problem this investment requirement brings is that while motorists pay many multiples of the entire road transport bill in taxes already, that money is spent elsewhere.
So what spending will the government cut to make this transition work? It’s going to have to be something big because the money needs reallocating today if we’re going to meet the 2030 goal.
We cannot meet the goal by just hoping some Deus Ex Machina event arrives and delivers it. It needs finding and planning and execution. Doing what we’re doing will end up forcing the poorest drivers off the roads.
If car charging gets subsidised, how long before someone comes up with a way to use this “cheaper” electricity for different purposes?
What, exactly, is “cultural” about plugging your car in a socket at home instead of at a pump in a petrol station?
> StopBurningStuff
I’m not sure this combative angle is the best idea. It risks them coming off as spoiling the fun and being preachy. ICE cars are fun. People have fond memories of them. They’ve also come a long way in reducing the emissions they emit. Getting on a high horse and telling people to “stop burning stuff” is not going to get them on side. It’s more complex than that given the high cost of entry and limited infrastructure of EVs still.
Electric cars have a lot of genuine advantages. They’re quieter, often faster, mechanically simpler, cheaper to run, and driving modes can give back some of that agency that more old fashioned enthusiasts might miss.
There’s a genuine argument to be made of “we should move to electric cars because they’re just better”, instead of it being a guilt trip over carbon emissions
I think manufacturers are already going to do the heavy lifting here though. More and more are throwing their weight behind EVs and pouring millions into marketing campaigns to make said cars desirable. It was easy to make fun of EVs when they were silly looking Toyotas driven by hippies, less so when all the Mercedes on the road are electric.
The scary part is this “The campaign, which is backed by scientists, climate ambassadors and senior industry,”
Some scientists get it very wrong, there is also bad science. It was ‘scientists’ who told us to get cleaner diesels 15 years ago to get the old bangers off the road when we had the scrappage scheme. So using it as an appeal to authority is very wrong. The Climate ambassadors and senior industry will also have an agenda and bias.
If they just let a free market happen, and electric is better the market will change all by its self. For some things like local delivery vans electric does make much more sense, as ICE with starter motors wear out quickly.
The infrastructure is not there yet for mass adoption, but everyone should be free to pick the option of petrol, diesel, hybrid or electric when they pick a car whichever is the best for their situation. If electric gets better people will buy it.
I’d still like some actual data on things like what 30million vehicles being charged every evening would be in terms of power generation requirements and how that energy would be generated. Aswell as the overall cost to the environment for the lithium etc mining and finally what they plan to do in regards to travel range if you end up stuck in an traffic jam due to an accident (especially if its cold/wet/dark) with a few hundred EVs for hours that could end up running out of battery.