Vocal Voices

There is an article you can read here, which details the common misconceptions about electric vehicles.

If you don't want to read it in detail, which also discusses the pollution angle, there is another linked article about the pollution differences between EV and Fossil Fuel vehicles.

One of the things which is very interesting from the first article is this.

Over the past decade or so, the picture has changed dramatically. Demand has surged to the point where child laborers can no longer meet it. About half of Congolese cobalt mines are owned by well-financed Chinese companies, and the vast majority of Congolese cobalt (about 80%) is now produced in mechanized open-pit mines with heavy equipment and not a child laborer in sight. However, cobalt is still profitable even for small mines, and so about 20% of Congo's cobalt is produced by artisanal mines doing things the old way. About 40,000 Congolese cobalt miners today are children, paid some $2 a day. That's a massive improvement over 10 years ago, but it's still obviously a big problem.

This is in STARK opposition to the Environ"menatlist" groups shrieking that EV's are driving children to work in mines. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. The need for such incredibly high volumes of cobalt and other metals has forced levels of investment that ensure children have no place in the mining. It also brings more money into the regions and gives parents more disposable income to send their children to school.

This is a radical departure from "accepted truth". In fact the best way to get the children out of the Congolese cobalt mines is to make demand for cobalt so high, at a price lower than today, that the volume required forces the move from human labour to machine labour. Forcing the children out of the mines forever.

Who would have thought it????

I've been doing a bit of thinking and it seems to me there are various reasons for anti EV feelings.
There are the worries about the cost of the vehicles and range anxiety, the well known reasons.

But there are others and the biggest is that EVs are the future; but the future of motoring in the UK is looking increasingly murky. And imo Evs are becoming guilty by association with that murky future. Not their fault, but there you are.

The murky future comes because when all is said and done there is a growing realisation that our political class do not actually want us to own cars.
We have already had this quote from a Conservative (my God) minister called Trudy Harrison. "Car ownership is outdated 20th century thinking". She honestly believes that electric scooters and pushbikes are a viable alternative to the car, along with car sharing schemes.
There are now 20mph zones spring up all over Britain. These are ostensibly to prevent accidents. In Wales rural roads have been reclassified as 20mph, down from 60mph.
But the real reason is very simple. As Brian Gregory of the Alliance of British Drivers has said "The aim is make driving so unpleasant we won't do it anymore".
The eternally half witted Grant Shapps has said that cyclists might have to obey the 20mph law by being registered and having number plates. Maybe someone should tell him that pushbikes don't have a speedo and retro fitting them to millions of bikes might be an issue. His words are just deflection.

We have enjoyed great personal freedom brought to us by car ownership. Nothing is going to be as convenient as that car parked on your drive. You can get in it any time you want and go more or less where you want. There are petrol stations everywhere. The system works. You can buy a second hand car for a few thousand and get years of life out of it.

But official policy is now more and more to make driving as unpleasant an experience as possible. 20mph zones, laws favouring cyclists, ULEZ zones, higher petrol prices.
There is massive uncertainty about the future of motoring and EVs are part of that future. As I say, guilt by association.

Why there isn't more of an outcry about the manifestly unfair treatment of drivers in the UK, I don't know. Maybe people don't realise yet how bad the situation is going to get.

Cromwell wrote:... the future of motoring in the UK is looking increasingly murky.

At last, someone gets it!

Private motoring in the UK is dead, or will be soon. 20 MPH limits everywhere, ULEZ, planters "Road Closed" blocking the Queen's highway - only to be shoved aside by the locals - humps. bumps and chicanes to try to enforce the new limits, rat runs created, infrequently used cycle lanes everywhere, pot holes with bodgers' "repairs" that only last for weeks, if that.

"Thou shalt not drive" has been decided.

Cars, of all types, are being driven off the roads (pun) in the UK and we sleepwalk into this new world.

When the politicians realised that the emissions from these personal freedoms were racking up a cost they do not want to pay, they did the usual thing. Push the problem onto us and make it our fault.

I am hopeful that EV will remove their excuses to try and block our access to personal transport.