The pressure increases to ‘go electric’ across the UK company vehicle market
Despite ever-increasing media attention, despite political meanderings and despite a fear that free will is being eroded, Iain Robertson remains aware that the ‘will-I-won’t-I’ choice hovers on a knife-edge between fiscal demand and faux hope.
Read the mainstream media and you might believe that confidence in electric vehicles (EVs) is turning the corner among car buyers. Yet, when pressed into providing a reasoned response, or parting with their ‘hard-earneds’, those potential buyers in the second-hand vehicle market shrink into a corner. It needs to be remembered that the largest single market in the UK is in previously owned/used; although the largest new car sector is inescapably corporate.
As usual, the shift from fossil fuels to electricity is a government sponsored activity. Having already paid millions of Pounds in ‘dirty air’ fines to the EU over the past two decades, government action has been deemed essential. Transport is perceived as one of the largest polluting of all commercial and private categories. Yet, altogether its impact is stated as being anything between 22% and 36%, dependent on which research is read. Transport has been painted as being unforgivably grubby but without taking consideration of the immense strides made in reducing CO2 exhaust emissions, reducing the pollution of its production plants, or increasing the fuel economy of its products.
However, simply shifting the ‘blame’ from fuel pumps to non-nuclear power stations is a case of extreme myopia. Government promised to lead from the front, which it has done partially, with its ‘investment’ in hybrid (part-electric) and EV ministerial transport. Yet, it can afford it, as it is not spending its own money but ours. It has encouraged the business sector to invest in EV technology, to install workplace charging devices and to ‘avoid’ road tax and BIK payments. Naturally, it states and restates its investments in the infrastructure…which the private sector is now tasked with improving. However, when the income to The Exchequer dries up in around thirty years’ time, rest assured, a replacement ‘road tax’ will be levied invariably on all EV users.
According to online car supermarket ‘BuyaCar.co.uk’, a 67% increase in used EV sales has been achieved during 2020. Just remember this one salient fact: 100% of nothing is still nothing! The actual impact of EVs on the former 2.0m-plus UK annual new car registrations has struggled to exceed 8%, which is not bad considering the past 20+ years of investment in hybrid, plug-in hybrid and EV technology…but it is not exactly ground-breaking.
In analysing ‘BuyaCar’s’ figures, it is worth noting that 2020 model year cars are among the most popular. It is a fact that should not be a surprise, as the market has been awash with former manufacturer demonstrators and pre-registered examples, from an industry that has been pressed into evangelising the EV movement. However, older stocks, the values of which plummet stone-like with every inevitable technological upgrade, can be regarded as a ‘cheap’ route into EVs, as long as the end-user has no concerns about mileage range, or both electronic and mechanical unreliability. You see, the garage sector has been slow to adapt to a future fuelled by electricity and the accident repair market alone is responsible for an inadvertent stockpiling of unrepaired EVs, through fears related to battery packs exposed to paint oven overheating, or the use of lightweight materials (aluminium, precious metals, advanced plastics and carbon-fibre) in their manufacturing processes.
The pandemic has placed unusual travel restrictions on consumers and businesspeople alike. Many of them, locked away with little else to occupy their time, have also been encouraged into thinking less about longer distance journeys and working from home. Yet, confronted by a largely biased media (the BBC with its state agenda to play; ITV with its advertiser responsibilities to serve), these same people have also become more conscious of political movements like Black Lives Matter, the US presidency, ‘BREXIT’, international trade deals, questionable governance, the politicisation of the pandemic and so on.
As long as the population is split almost evenly between those on the left, or right, of a largely centrist political strategy, the levels of disbelief, discredit and dishonour will be almost equally balanced by confidence, confirmation and cohesion. It is inevitable that the news of an intended ban on the sales of all fossil-fuelled cars (without pertinent mention of vans, trucks, buses, trains, boats and planes), by 2030, will encourage EV website searches, for little more than information, however skewed it might be, which allows most of them to boast of significant percentage increases (I remind you of the 100/100 rule!).
Most of those websites boast of ‘growing consumer confidence in electric cars’ but it is a ‘confidence’ based on little more than flimsy statistics. The forthcoming sea-change to EVs is now less than a decade away but it is a notional bar that can be lifted with little more than a change of government and it is that level of uncertainty, let’s face it, that acts as the largest barrier to change. At absolute best, the approach of mainstream acceptance still hovers around the 5% level, with possibly around 45% of the rest of the 30m UK car buying market vacillating between the ‘maybe/maybe not’ choice. It is being a bit previous and false to inject hope into the entire consumer market by way of juggling figures and avoiding the pertinent home truths.
However, fossil fuels have only a finite remaining existence. Industry, not least the power generating one in the UK, remains the largest user. Developing an alternative, chemical compound fuel may have been a better investment than that made in battery and charging technology, although this latter pair can be useful. To expect car manufacturers to change from technology extant for the past 140 years, within just ten, is a massive demand. Surely an alternative (non-fossil) fuel would have been a better solution?
Forget all these ‘carbon offset’ deals and tree-planting promotions, because they are as bad as shifting blame to power stations. Harnessing wind, wave and hydrogen power are feasible alternatives, for the meantime. Yet, the best solution from everybody capable of making the changes must surely be to tell the truth, while probable end-users need to use that truth to fuel their future decisions.