Are EVs the future of motoring?
Earlier this year, if you’re a user of social media, you may have seen photographs from Paris that quickly went viral. Their subject matter was electric vehicles with commentators and social media armchair experts reacting with glee to a huge field of abandoned cars.
It was quickly labelled a “boneyard” and “graveyard” with many claiming hundreds had been left to rot because their batteries had died.
And yet.
New images emerged – proving that the camera can lie – showing this to be “fake news”. The EVs were indeed abandoned – but for business reasons – as the company “AutoLib” went bankrupt in 2018 with 233 million Euros of debt.
Many of the four thousands cars were sold at auctions to companies and individuals and the ones in a field are unsold, yet still operational.
Closer to home, renewable energy is something our government and local leaders are very much aware of with the need to cut CO2 emissions a global, national and local priority.
Steve Cook has already written about how renewable energy boomed in 2020 on our new blog page, highlighting local success stories about a solar farm in North Norfolk and the wind turbines at Scroby Sands and Sheringham Shoal.
EVs used to be a rare sight locally but now they’re not. Many people were deterred from buying or leasing one because of the weak charging infrastructure but this has changed for the better in the past few years. Supermarkets, shopping malls, leisure centres can all be seen with cars tethered to power. Car manufacturers have embraced EV technology too with fully electric cars from the likes of Nissan, Mini, BMW, VW and Tesla, as well as petrol-electric hybrids from practically all manufacturers.
Diesel engines, once renowned for their torque and efficiency, are no longer chosen in high numbers by those who rack up high mileages and in Norfolk itself, First Buses are introducing hybrid double deckers to reduce pollution and noise in Norwich city centre.
We’re also fortunate in Norfolk to have three clean natural commodities in abundance – sun, wind and water (not quite Earth, Wind and Fire, we know) and these are perhaps the future for this area and nationally.
Norfolk is enveloped by the North Sea and the Wash, a perfect base for offshore wind farms. Along with Essex and Suffolk, Norfolk is one of the sunniest places in Britain and we have a natural network of rivers and broads for leisure and tourism.
What we’re trying to say, and hopefully this comes across to you, is that climate change is happening and we all need to do our bit for the environment. Those floods in Belgium, Germany and China were tragic – if we accept that they were probably caused by climate change, we should accept that green travel is not to be ridiculed as fake news in Paris, but something we all need to embrace from school runs on e-scooters to workplace commutes in EVs.
What do you think? Connect with us on LinkedIn and join the discussion there.
