APPG 2030 Ban

Fair Fuel APPG for UK Motorists and UK Hauliers August 2021 Page | 57 Is all this sacrifice worth it? The second-hand vehicle market will be as good as ruined. Financially, it will hardly be worth replacing batteries at high cost in old vehicles, so I very much doubt there will be much demand for any vehicle approaching the current average of 8.4 years of UK vehicles. About one quarter, or 10 million vehicles, are at least 13 years old. It’s unlikely that this will be the case in future; battery technology just doesn’t seem capable of lasting so many recharges without serious degradation of charge capacity and therefore range, making the second-hand value of these vehicles little or nothing. This means more frequent replacement, the production therefore leading to further increases in the environmental footprint of the vehicle manufacturing sector. As a rough guide, many manufacturers offer a 100,000-mile warranty for their battery vehicles, which means if you’re a high mileage user, then you might find yourself in trouble with having to replace your batteries – or your car – much more often than at present. So far, there’s no good solution to the problem of disposing of millions of tonnes of the contents of highly toxic electric batteries. Recycling facilities are virtually non- existent and the energy input to break them down and recycle the components truly vast often involving highly toxic chemicals to break down virtually impenetrable resins. The practice, to date, has been to store dead batteries in warehouses, underground or send to landfill. The longer-term leeching of toxic chemicals has not, to date, been addressed, or considered. Also, electric vehicles are heavier than the equivalent ICE powered vehicle because they have to haul their batteries around; that’s hundreds of extra kilos of battery flab, wasteful braking systems and road damage. This means they need more power, not less for the same journey and recharged following significant transmission losses from wind blade, solar array, nuclear power station or fossil fuel powered plant. We need more energy to provide less power through the wheels. There are multiple stories of uncontrolled fires after accidents have led to the rupture of battery packs. Also extremely difficult to extinguish by conventional means providing a new headache for the fire service. It’s the same reason you aren’t allowed to put your mobile phone in the hold luggage on an aeroplane. Scale this up to grid level battery farms covering hectares and I have a legitimate cause for concern. So, if the government has its way, you’ll have to ferry your family around on an array of batteries composed of rare elements often mined under oppressive conditions, manufactured at huge environmental cost, ferried half way around the world, charged with electricity that may or may not have come from a renewable source, distributed along new copper cables mined elsewhere, smelted, transported and laid under a street near you at astronomical CO 2 use. You wouldn’t want to have your family anywhere near the said batteries in the event of an accident or failure; the vehicle will have a limited range, longish charging times and energy supply problems, all because someone convinced the Government that this is good for the environment and cutting CO 2 . My rejection of the banning of petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles is therefore a common sense one. It won’t work, but people in ordinary jobs and living in ordinary homes won’t be able to afford to make the switch either. It’s unrealistic, tokenistic and authoritarian and distinctly un-Conservative, for no demonstratable environmental benefit. And all the while ICE designers and manufacturers have stopped any possibility for technological improvements that we’ve seen, often in great leaps throughout the evolution of the internal combustion engine. That’s it – the 2019 petrol or diesel is as good as its going to get. No further improvements to performance, fuel consumption, nitrous oxide or particulate output. Why would engine designers expend vast sums on improving further? The safety record of batteries has yet to be addressed.