Who wouldn’t agree that zero tail pipe emissions is a huge improvement outside the school gates. No price can be put on children’s health. but feeling smug can be countered by knowledge of the big picture. Your Volvo EX30 is made in China, by owners Geely, a Chinese Company. Having mined raw materials, @50% more than for an ICE equivalent and transported them from Chile, Congo etc to make 600 kg batteries, the heavy, finished car is transported by a Ro Ro, diesel powered ship, thousands of miles to the UK. It is much heavier than an ICE, causing extra tyre wear and particulate pollution, plus extra wear to roads. If the battery casing is damaged if you are in an accident, the whole car if often written off, an environmental disaster vs repairable ice cars with a much longer lifespan. Fuel: high calorific petrol is burned very efficiently in situ. It’s journey to the fuel tank not so great. base load electricity is a shambles in the uk. Gas from Qatar or Texas is subjected to being liquified, transported by diesel ships, converted back to gas and ends up in a part time inefficient power station that supplies electricity to the grid and there are losses in transmission and the step down transformers. Then the car has inverters and rectifiers as AC has to be converted to DC and there are further losses in the motors. Chinese solar panels, made in part with slave labour, and giant turbine blades that cannot be recycled do not produce reliable base load, but are great when the weather is favourable. Buying from European neighbours means our energy is the most expensive in the developed world and four times the USA. Where is the extra power coming from for replacing 20 million ice cars, factories to build them with imported steel, data centres, heat pumps etc etc. we can’t just buy everything from China because we are already bankrupt. Go Ed. Audi and Jaguar spent billions developing the EQ8 and I Pace. The bespoke new factories in Belgium and Austrian are now being closed. 3000 I paces bought back and scraped due unresolvable fire risk. What an environmental disaster. Owners are far from smug about huge financial loses. New battery tech cannot come soon enough.
💯 Greenwashing, the biggest con the motor industry has seen.