Hello. I’m an EV owner. But I like to think I’m not an EV zealot. I may even have not-fully-formed-thoughts about how eliminating all petrol vehicles may not be a good thing. So bear with me. I’m NOT trying to force anything on you. This is just a thought experiment.
A while ago I heard someone say, when discussing battery EV’s, something like: “there are trade-offs with filling your car with fuel too”.
And it got me thinking: What if we were in some alternate universe, considering moving FROM battery EV’s to petrol/diesel-powered transport? What would our objections be there?
- Fuel is more expensive!
- I have to travel to a special place to top up? I can’t have fuel delivered to my house?
- And you need to get all the fuel to the top-up places too. How will that work? And isn’t moving all that flammable liquid around really dangerous?
- We don’t drill for oil in the UK. At least, not much. Will we have to import all this fuel? Sounds expensive.
- Won’t it be really messy and environmentally bad getting all of the oil out of the ground?
- I have to carry round a box-full of highly-flammable liquid? My kid has to sit on top of this box? Surely that will explode or cause loads of fires? Isn’t that really dangerous in crashes?
- Won’t it will be really noisy? Both inside the car and even more so on the streets?
- Won’t it cause loads of pollution and make the air hard to breathe? Sounds like a public health nightmare!
- How will I remember that I need to get more fuel? If the range is high and I can’t change at home, I can totally see myself forgetting to check when I need to top up.
- The engine will have limited speed, so I’ll need a complicated gearbox to be able to go fast? Sounds like an expensive thing to replace when it breaks.
- And the engine… won’t that be really complicated with lots of moving parts to maintain and potentially replace when they break? Won’t it frequently go wrong and won’t servicing be really expensive?
- Only about 20% of the energy goes into actually moving? My EV gets about 90%! What?!
- It’s slow to heat up the interior in winter? And the engine runs hot all year round? What a waste!
- The brakes don’t regenerate energy? So they wear down quickly and dissipate all the energy as heat?
- All so that cars can be a bit cheaper and I can travel a bit further? You must think I’m mad!
I imagine drivers would be incensed. No one would want this. It sounds utterly absurd.
Sure, EV’s aren’t without their problems right now, and I don’t believe they’re the only things we need to so by a LONG way. Not owning a personal vehicle is far preferable! But if you look at it like this… could we get to a place where petrol-powered personal transport seems outrageous?