The EV story might turn out to be one of the world's, and certainly the transportation industry's, biggest headaches as company after company admit they leapt in way too quick to electric, bought into all the Government-led madness on climate and invested, God-knows how much to transfer to a mode of movement the world wasn’t ready for, or wanted.
EVs were sold as way more than they ever were.
Now even the scientists are waking up. There's a good piece of reading from Dr Caroline Shaw published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, whereby they do what we really should have done at the start and look at the EV in totality.
It said don’t get all hyped and hooked up on emissions. Yes, emissions in an EV vs petrol debate do drop. But what about the rest of it? They looked at all sorts of things like the extra weight, therefore the extra wear and tear, the weight and therefore the potential for injury, the cheapness of driving, therefore you drive more, therefore our fitness drops as we drive and don’t walk.
They looked at a myriad of things that should have been thought about and scoped out on day one and weighed up.
Because here is the end result: when you add all that stuff up, the good, the bad and the ugly, electrifying cars would lie somewhere between harmful and neutral.
Are you serious?
Going electric could be harmful? Would it have not been useful to crunch a few of those ideas to understand this at the start of the obsession that drove the thinking?
Or, like so much ideology, do the details not matter as long as we can leap on the old bandwagon, take a small piece of the bigger picture and then milk it for all its worth, knowing that we can leave the reality and the clean-up for another day?
This by the way is not anti-EV.
It’s the realisation that like most things, what was the answer, and the obsession, and the next new thing, actually turns out to be just another piece in a way bigger, more complex, picture than the obsessives ever care to learn about.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced
Now even the scientists are waking up. There's a good piece of reading from Dr Caroline Shaw published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, whereby they do what we really should have done at the start and look at the EV in totality.
It said don’t get all hyped and hooked up on emissions. Yes, emissions in an EV vs petrol debate do drop. But what about the rest of it? They looked at all sorts of things like the extra weight, therefore the extra wear and tear, the weight and therefore the potential for injury, the cheapness of driving, therefore you drive more, therefore our fitness drops as we drive and don’t walk.
They looked at a myriad of things that should have been thought about and scoped out on day one and weighed up.
Because here is the end result: when you add all that stuff up, the good, the bad and the ugly, electrifying cars would lie somewhere between harmful and neutral.
Are you serious?
Going electric could be harmful? Would it have not been useful to crunch a few of those ideas to understand this at the start of the obsession that drove the thinking?
Or, like so much ideology, do the details not matter as long as we can leap on the old bandwagon, take a small piece of the bigger picture and then milk it for all its worth, knowing that we can leave the reality and the clean-up for another day?
This by the way is not anti-EV.
It’s the realisation that like most things, what was the answer, and the obsession, and the next new thing, actually turns out to be just another piece in a way bigger, more complex, picture than the obsessives ever care to learn about.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced
3 comments:
I've had a full career as an electrical engineer and am very much in favour of the idea of electric vehicles. I believe that they are a big part of future transportation but not a total answer. I'll not be buying one soon however, I believe that they are far too complex and they were rushed into the global market with a faulty battery technology which has ensured that they have not had worldwide popularity without government subsidies. Most economists will accept that subsidies only cause a temporary distortion of the market and offer suppliers an opportunity to extort the market.
Still waiting for the promised revolution in battery technology but I pity the people who have just bought a new E.V. the day before it's announced.
EV mania was pie in the sky. It only takes one major delay for charging to convince of the impracticality for general use. There is immense scope for improving the whole of life world CO2 generation from ic engines. Does not include 110 kph limit. There was the recent caes of an old Corolla with 2 milion km; a very low whole of life CO2 generation.
Private vehicles have become absurdly and unnecessarily large and heavy, in part forced by the elaborate requirements for children. But as long as vehicles are seen as status symbols no great gains will be achieved. And certainly not under a free for all democratic system.
Interesting looking ahead...
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/04/why-your-ev-wont-fill-up-in-five/
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