In summer 2023 I published a controversial book called why I Will Never Buy an Electric Car. This proved popular with 220 reviews on Amazon alone. The original edition covered the history of motor transport and then went on to discuss the many snags of electric car ownership. Short range. Limited charging infrastructure. The enormous expense of replacing lithium-ion batteries which only last a few years. Battery fires. Problems with charging in cold weather. And of course the fact that the production of electric cars — particularly the batteries — is associated with huge carbon emissions.
Now three years on, I have published an expanded Second Edition of the book which brings the reader up to date with everything that has been happening since 2023. Ed Miliband’s fanatical push for Net Zero has not resulted in electricity bills being reduced by £300 per year as he claimed as Britain now has the most expensive energy in the world.
Electric cars are an even poorer choice for the average motorist than they were three years ago. Government subsidies have now vanished and electric car owners have to pay Road Tax — from which they were formerly exempt — and there are plans to introduce a pay-per-mile charge for all EV drivers. Owners of petrol and diesel cars are also being squeezed and just before the book went to the publishers the Government announced proposed legislation — due to go through Parliament in the summer of 2027 — which requires owners of all internal combustion engine cars to submit to a yearly exhaust emission level check. The implication of this proposed legislation is that any cars which fail the new emission regulations —which may happen just because their catalytic convertor is a few years old — will have to be scrapped. I believe this is a cynical ploy to take many petrol and diesel cars off the road and force people into electric cars.
