First thing first: I'm not wealthy but I live and always lived within my means.
I have no expensive habits and my car is the only "extravagance" I concede to myself.
Excuse me if I don't smoke, drink, bet, go on holiday 5 times a year or eat out every day.
I don't especially care what your personal circumstances are, but in one post you're talking about people who can't afford an electric vehicle, and then you go on to your real reason - which is simply that you like your old ICE cars. Fine. I like my old Alfa. But let's be honest about this, eh?.
Secondly, if you think that driving an EV is good for the environment, think again.
Lithium and cobalt are mined by slaves.
Your fellow human beings being detained against their will and made to handle these 2 dangerous materials bare handed.
Yes they are. Fortunately, nothing like that happens in the oil industry, does it? It's not like oil is hazardous and it's not like there aren't any child / slave labourers working in oil fields in Angola or Nigeria, is there? And everyone in the Latin American oil-producing countries and the Middle East, is paid fairly and treated well... right...? (Oh, and since you mention cobalt - you think there's none in an ICE vehicle? Think again. Cobalt steel is increasingly being used in some of the higher-stressed areas.
Also, don't look at the emission figures at the exhaust pipe.
Look at the overall carbon footprint of your beloved EV.
Who said anything about carbon? I'm talking about air quality. You do realise they're different things, don't you? However, since you bring it up, carbon footprint is a trope beloved of the anti-EV brigade. Like all good tropes, there is some truth in it. Like-for-like, the manufacturing CO2 emissions of an EV are greater than those of an ICE vehicle of similar size and performance. However, the in-use CO2 emissions are of course, a lot lower. Even in countries that use a lot of coal to generate their electricity, they're lower. In Western Europe, they're much lower. The last credible study I saw, suggested that the break-even point was about 50,000 miles. After that, the total CO2 footprint of the EV just gets lower.
They surely burn more in terms of environmental waste than ice vehicles kept on the road for 2 decades.
As mentioned above, that's very unlikely to be the case. What's more, in 20 years time, it's likely that the National Grid figures for CO2 per kWh generated, will be FAR lower than today. Unlike an ICE vehicle, whose carbon emissions tend to go up a bit as they age, an EV's carbon emissions will go DOWN as the carbon emissions used to generate the electricity fall.
In the meantime i've enjoyed my cars, some "green" prophet has changed 5 or 6 EV.
Aye... that'll be right...
Like the previous owner of my 1980s Alfa sold it to buy an EV, right? No he didn't. He bought a newer ICE car.
How do you think they manufactur these electric boxes?
By hand in a shed using recycled material?
No, they're produced in factories, spitting gases in the atmosphere.
...unlike your Audi and Passat, which, of course, were built lovingly by hand, using an ethically-employed, fairtrade, gender-diverse workforce in a mud hut somewhere?
Finally, your effort counts nothing because china, india, the US and South American countries don't give a damn about pollution.
The planet is a living organism and to reduce pollution we should reduce it globally, not only on our little island.
Ah... that one...
I suppose it's a bit like saying the Americans have fair higher rates of gun crime, so why should we bother trying to reduce ours? Or the Latin Americans have far higher drug problems, so why should we bother trying to tackle ours? There are a couple of other points associated with this too. Firstly, as the first nation in the world to industrialise we've had something of a head start on these other countries when it comes to CO2 emissions. We've been making them a lot longer than they have. Secondly, there is a wonderful hypocrisy in outsourcing most of our manufacturing to places like China and then sitting back and complimenting ourselves on what a wonderful job we're doing on CO2 emissions! You're right. It
IS a global problem, and shifting a big chunk of our CO2 to some sweatshop on the other side of the world really doesn't (or shouldn't!) fool anyone! And finally, I get sick of hearing British people whining about how we used to lead the world in this, that, or the other industry, but now the Germans / Japanese / Chinese / (insert name of country you wish to cry about) have overtaken us. Carbon neutrality is the next big challenge. We are a staggeringly inventive race that gave the world railways and so many other technological "firsts". Now we have a choice here; we
could step up to the plate, bite the bullet, make the necessary investments and become world leaders in low-carbon power generation and consumption technologies...
...or, we
could sit back, saying it's some other country's job, because they're bigger than us and they make more CO2 anyway, and then cry into our beer when we end up buying that same technology from China, India, or whoever ends up developing it before we do...
Getting rid of unnecessary plastic would be a much better step for the planet.
Doing both would be better still....
