Most people’s car journeys are fairly short affairs. Going to the shops , work or some entertainment. Once in a while we go on a longer journey for maybe a holiday or a day out. So basically mainly short journeys with the occasional long one. So the government decided that we should all move to fully electric vehicles. Fully electric cars are very expensive , generally not the highest of quality and often give you range anxiety due to short range and not enough places to charge them , absolute genius on the governments behalf.
So why did they totally overlook the hybrid? Virtually all journeys can be done on the electric mode and for longer journeys you can go into petrol mode. So mainly electric travel and no range anxiety. Oh and the other thing , total financial regret. Why would spend £35000 on a car that looks like a £20000 vehicle? Most cars are status symbols to be honest. You could spend £75000 on a car that looks pretty similar to a ford mondeo, but why would you? Don’t get me wrong , i think that the modeo is a great car but there is something in me that would always say no even though I know that it is a good choice as a form of transport.
The other big problem with the electric vehicles is how do you charge them? Where i live most people don’t have garages except to use as a ground floor attic, and that is if they are lucky enough to have a garage in the first place. Most people park in a different place every time often several streets away from where they live so unless you have a cable going down the pavement for a few hundred metres that is not going to work. Maybe you could use one of the two charging points in the local supermarket?
So the objective to get most people to have clean journeys was badly thought out and rushed through. Taxation is the usual way to get big companies to do what you want them to do so they should have given incentives to do the research on the batteries and use the hybrids as an in between stage before the infrastructure to charge the cars was in place and the research and development of the batteries done so that they were functional at a reasonable price.
I do remember the story in Newcastle of how they had to change the bus routes because the electric busses could not get up the hill because it was too steep. Even when people are trying to do their best things can go wrong and that is just a fact of life.
How about having charging posts in the street, like they have in my street. If you want, you can ask, and the provider will install one outside your house.