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Mike Hosking: Environmentalists have no grasp on reality

Author
Mike Hosking ,
Publish Date
Tue, 6 Nov 2018, 8:57AM
With EVs, the gap between theory and reality is still a mile wide. Photo / NZ Herald
With EVs, the gap between theory and reality is still a mile wide. Photo / NZ Herald

Mike Hosking: Environmentalists have no grasp on reality

Author
Mike Hosking ,
Publish Date
Tue, 6 Nov 2018, 8:57AM

So fresh off our plastic bag scam yesterday, comes the rort around electric cars. Like the bags, we've jumped on the environmental bandwagon without ever having worked out, or asked, what the potential consequences or fallout is.

Reusable cotton bags need to be used 173 times to pay their way environmentally, do you think anyone does that? Of course not.

Meantime in car land, we are seeing on TradeMe, the early electric cars for sale. Some are without charging chords, most have a limited and reduced range as the battery fades.

So how long does a battery last? How quickly does its range fade? How much does a new battery cost if you replace it? Where do you get one from?

Do you know the answers to any of those questions?

What is the trade value of a used EV compared to a petrol driven equivalent? Are you burning the money in lost value from the money you saved on gas?

Did you even think about that?

While the media remains abuzz at the potential of electric cars, driverless cars, and electric driverless cars that fly, are we actually buying these cars? No, we are not.

EV sales remain below one percent, and that's another interesting point. Are we still buying cars? Oh yes, my word we are. We are heading for our sixth year in a row of record sales. We've never bought, never owned, more cars.

And yet so few of them are EVs, why? Because the gap between theory and reality is still a mile wide, because we still love engines and petrol.

No matter how hard the media, the spin doctors, and the environmentalists tell us that EVs are here and the future, they're not. For every EV we buy, we buy 64 utes. One to 64, and that's just utes, that doesn't include all other cars.

And that is yet another irony, what are the most popular cars? Four wheel drives and SUVs. You know the ones, the big ones, the ones with big engines.

So not a lot of EVs with serious environmental question marks. And at a time of record sales and the sales are of cars that could not be more dramatically opposed to EVs.

So the disconnect between the real world and the bollocks being spun is right up there with, well, plastic bags.

 

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