The Mail has been publishing a lot of negative stories about electric cars. The headlines in isolation could easily lead the reader to assume that these stories reflect a total opposition to electric vehicles (EVs) in principle.
Throughout July 2023, the Mail Online website published a conspicuously large number of pessimistic EV stories. On some occasions, multiple EV headlines appeared per day.
On 2nd July
- Why electric cars are NOT green machines: The environmental benefit of EVs may never be felt as their production creates up to 70% more emissions than petrol equivalents
- Put brakes on 'damaging' drive to ban petrol and diesel cars by 2030, MPs and industry leaders tell ministers as Mail poll finds just 1 in 4 back the government's timetable for moving to electric vehicles
On 3rd July
- NADINE DORRIES: Why I handed my electric car back with less than 5,000 miles on the clock
- That's a shock! Recharging electric cars can be more expensive than a petrol refill amid surging electricity costs
- Just a THIRD of councils have taken up government funding to fit on-street electric car chargers in fresh blow to minister plans to ban sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2030
- BRIAN CLEGG: Electric cars ARE the future, but the 2030 deadline to ban petrol and diesel cars is near impossible and we could all suffer the pain
On 4th July
- Electric car drivers are forced to clog their phones with more than 30 payment apps to navigate the charging network
- Could electric cars spell the end of Britain's front gardens? Leading conservationist warns homeowners are paving over their lawns to install charging points
On 8th July
- How long does it REALLY take to save money on an electric car? They’re more expensive to buy but supposedly cheaper to run yet experts warn it can take up to a DECADE to break even - as EV drivers say they regret investing
On 9th July
- Will China use electric cars to spy on UK drivers? MPs warn Beijing's dominance of the industry poses a threat on the scale of the crisis over Huawei
On 16th July
- The dirty secret behind your electric vehicles exposed: How the TIRES produce 20% more pollution than their gas equivalents - as experts slam 'big monster' EVs
Those are just some of the stories we saw on Mail Online, and that's without those that have appeared on the Mail's This is Money website. There may have been others.
Other news publishers have also featured the odd story highlighting shortcomings in current (no pun intended) electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and other issues with the projected timeline for eliminating petrol engines. However, none of them seems to have adopted the Mail's carpet-bombing approach.
Are electric vehicles really so terrible?
Despite the tabloid melodrama in the headlines, there doesn't seem to be an actual campaign of EV-hate going on here, just a slightly frenetic presentation of genuine concerns. The stories behind most of these headlines do stand as valid points that need to be addressed. Here's a list, without the clickbait sensationalism.
- EV production may produce more emissions than comparable ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle production.
- Current charging infrastructure is inadequate and the situation looks set to get worse as more EVs take to the roads.
- Cost of purchase and ownership can be higher than with an equivalent ICE vehicle.
- The increase in EVs may mean the loss of front gardens (with consequent drainage and wildlife habitat issues) as people pave gardens for parking while charging.
- Tyres on EVs may produce more polluting particles than those on equivalent ICE vehicles.
- Current preparations seem unlikely to deliver everything needed for the government's plans to ban sales of ICE vehicles by 2030 to be successfully implemented.
- There may be potential security issues from China's involvement in EV production.
If we disregard the Sinophobic stretch of the last item and concentrate on the practical issues, the emerging sentiment isn't that electric cars are bad in themselves, but that there is still a lot to be done to make them work as a sustainable improvement over what we currently have.
The Mail's choice of headline may be uniquely over the top but the same concerns have been raised across the media.
Problematic petroleum
There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that human activity at least hastens the process and may even be a substantial cause. If we set aside claims made by believers or sceptics and just consider what we actually see around us, changes in our weather seem obvious to this writer. No doubt, those changes seem even more obvious to the millions of people currently enduring the unprecedented heatwaves and consequent wildfires in parts of Europe, Asia, North Africa and North America. As we write, Australia's firefighters are being prepared for an exceptional fire season if the expected El Niño conditions prevail again.
There is an equally overwhelming scientific consensus that the exhaust fumes from petroleum-driven internal combustion engines are seriously, sometimes fatally, harming the health of people who are exposed to them.
The projected consequences of climate change, rising sea levels, compromised food production etc, are profound. Not only could they cause harm in themselves, they also increase the likelihood of conflict over access to remaining resources.
All that is before we even face the fact that the remaining oil fields won't last forever.
Talking the talk
The UK government has set a target of 2030 for the banning of new petrol and diesel car sales. By 2035 new hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles are set to be banned too. Unless these targets change, the only choices for new car buyers will be electric.
The government has set a target of 300,000 public charging stations to be installed and working by 2030. Figures up to June this year show about 44,500 public charging points were in place. In June the rate of installation was about 1,700 charging points a month. The rate is increasing but current projections still show a possible shortfall of 100,000 charging stations when we reach the 2030 cut-off for ICE vehicle sales. The government says it can still meet that target, but even they admit that they'll have to increase the rate of installation dramatically to achieve that.
We should also point out that the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders doesn't think that 300,000 will be enough. In fact, they say more than 2 million stations will be required to meet demand.
When we distil the actual content that gets awarded those loaded, clickbait headlines, we can't argue with the implication that the UK really isn't ready for the necessary transport revolution.
Delivery or disaster
At the moment it is hard to see how the 2030/2035 timeline can be followed without a degree of inconvenience and confusion. The lack of public charging points will be partly balanced by the fact that nearly two thirds of people have off-street parking where they could charge their vehicles from their domestic power supply. However, that still leaves plenty of demand for public charging from people without that off-street facility, people making journey's that exceed the single-charge range of their cars and people who may find themselves running low on power unexpectedly.
It is a fact of life that manufacturers figures regarding fuel consumption rarely survive contact with the real world. Whether those figures are given in miles/km per gallon or miles/km per charge, they do not account for traffic jams, detours and other common factors that drivers encounter every day. We are going to need those charging stations.
The changeover to electric vehicles must happen. The infrastructure must appear, the teething problems and the limitation of current battery technology must be overcome. We must ensure that the electricity itself that we use to charge our cars is generated by sustainable, low/no carbon means. We must invest in wind, wave, tidal and solar energy. If we don't begin to move a lot faster than we are, the heatwaves and fires will happen more often and on bigger scales. The full list of the consequences of failure doesn't bear contemplating.
Surely, our press shouldn't be undermining the feasibility of electric power for cars with sensationalist headlines: they should be informing people about what needs to happen, who is responsible for getting the necessary work done and where they are failing to deliver.
