My worries about the rush to go electric

I like EVs. They’re fast, fun to drive and help improve urban air quality. But the plans to force them on to new car buyers over the next decade have not been thought through. Phasing out vehicles powered by Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) will inflict grave penalties on poorer drivers. At the same time, the environmental merits of EVs are overplayed.

EVs account for about half of all car sales in the UK, France and Germany – most going to company car fleets. Yet, in the UK, EVs still only make up two or three per cent of all cars on the road. Right now, demand vastly outstrips supply. After an EV from VW or Mercedes today? Delivery will have to wait till next year.

Sales of EVs could anyway stall before long. The affluent few with the motivation and means to buy them will soon all have one. Despite talk of cost parity with ICE cars, supply chain crunches in semiconductors, and around the raw materials for batteries, are today making EVs dearer – at just the moment when the cost of living crisis has begun to bite. In May, before inflation took off, a survey of 6,000 people in six developed economies found that 62 per cent couldn’t afford an EV in the near future.

This is no short-term glitch, either. Analysts now estimate that EVs will remain more expensive than ICE cars for at least another decade. That forecast undoes a key assumption behind the UK ban on pure ICE cars that’s due to be enacted in 2030, and the ban on hybrids that’s meant to come in 2035 – that EVs will be the same price, or cheaper, than traditional equivalents.

In 2018, the gilets jaunes in France vigorously opposed President Macron’s environmentally-minded increase in fuel taxes. Four years later, similar protests across the developing world may point to what is to come in developed nations this winter, as energy prices really bite. If mass unrest doesn’t overturn the 2030/35 phase-out of ICE vehicles, many motorists – and white van drivers – will be priced out of four-wheeled personal transport.

For lower-paid workers wanting a new car in the West, the more-or-less mandatory purchase of pricey EVs will come after four decades of falling or flat wage growth. Already, household cutbacks on purchasing food – and cars – explain much of the economic slowdown in the US. Compulsory new EVs will hurt Americans, who rely on cars for their livelihoods and the school run, even harder.

Of course, ICE cars have their environmental defects. But last year, Volvo published a report that compared the environmental impact of its electric XC40 Recharge car with that of its equivalent ICE model. Volvo calculated CO2 emissions over the full lifecycle of the two products: from mining minerals like lithium and cobalt, through driving, to end-of-life disposal. This kind of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is as much an art as a science, owing to the number of assumptions made; but before either are driven, the carbon impact of the ICE vehicle was roughly 40 per cent lower than that for the EV.

The ICE XC40 burns fuel throughout its life. But how quickly the Recharge catches up with the ICE in terms of the greenhouse effect depends on how much of the electricity that powers it is free of carbon. If the EV is charged purely on wind, solar or nuclear energy it ‘breaks even’ and starts to have less impact after just 31,000 miles of use. However, if it's charged using the average mix of electricity sources used worldwide, the Recharge needs to be driven more than 6,000 miles before it beats the ICE version. Note, too, that this global average mix of power sources was calculated before countries such as Germany fired up its coal power stations in the wake of the Kremlin turning the gas taps off.

Many cars in cities are smaller than the XC40, and will run for at least a decade without getting near 68,000 miles on the clock. Put another way, most urban EV runabouts will never beat their ICE counterparts on CO2 emissions.

So why do official policy and polite opinion stigmatise ICE drivers, at the same time as governments give taxpayer-funded incentives and moral praise on relatively well-heeled EV owners?

EVs are the future. But until they become a lot cheaper, trying to accelerate their take-up doesn’t make environmental, social or economic sense. There are technical problems, too: the lack of charging stations, doubts over the availability of battery materials, and worries about the readiness of electricity grids to take the extra load of charging EVs. But my big concern is with the impact on most drivers. Pressing for the adoption of EVs could easily cause yet more division in societies that are already fractured. Too much haste could deprive significant sections of the public – particularly women – of the means to get around.

Many drivers believe that an out-of-touch over-class has imposed an inequitable EV policy without debating its effect on mass living standards. We urgently need an open, informed discussion on the costs, benefits and timeline of the intended phase-out of ICE cars.

In a glaring example of lofty ambitions confronted with grim reality, California first announced a ban on sales of ICE vehicles by 2035, only for the state’s Independent System Operator, CAISO, to ask Californians to ‘avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles, and turn off unnecessary lights’.

The world faces severe economic storms. Worse, incompetent long-term planning by governments in North America and Europe has lost them the confidence of millions. A rational EV strategy, at this juncture, would be to build more nuclear reactors as a reliable source of low-carbon electricity and upgrade electricity grids to prepare properly for all the demand for power that is bound to come in future.

These two measures would prevent further impoverishment and give EV manufacturers time to drive down prices – and even develop next-generation batteries that don't need Lithium.

So, EVs are great, but they – and the infrastructure they need – are not ready yet!

PS

Let me know if you’d like your team to hear the whole talk on which this is based.