David Craig, on August 6th, 2023Sunday/Monday/Tuesday blog
As you all know, in order to avoid an imaginary, totally non-existent climate catastrophe, we’re all being encouraged to buy EVs (electric vehicles). In fact, from 2030 car manufacturers will be prohibited from selling ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars in Britain.
I believe that the useless, eco-fanaticist BBC did a programme recently on the benefits and disadvantages of EVs presented by the BBC’s globe-trotting, jet-setting climate catastrophist-in-chief, Justin Rowlatt. But as I can’t stand Rowlatt’s (IMHO) self-satisfied, virtue-signalling, smug face, I didn’t watch the programme. However, I thought I might use this blog to do my bit fighting supposed climate change by suggesting some of the main advantages and drawbacks of EVs.
Advantages of EVs compared to ICE or hybrid cars:
- um, er, can I get back to you on that?
Drawbacks of EVs compared to ICE or hybrid cars:
- The rare earth metals needed for the batteries are mostly produced by child slave labour and the mining is environmentally catastrophic
- They are least twice as heavy as ICE or hybrid cars, so much more energy is used to move them
- Being so heavy, it’s believed that many multi-storey car parks will collapse if too many EVs are parked in them
- Being so heavy, they cause much more road damage (pot-holes) than ICE or hybrid cars
- Being so heavy, they will require their tyres to be replaced at least twice as often as tyres on ICE or hybrid cars
- They may be more polluting than ICE or hybrid cars as particulates from their tyres are toxic and carcinogenic and their tyres will shed more toxic particulates than those of ICE or hybrid cars
- They are much more expensive than ICE or hybrid cars
- Replacing the battery can cost up to £10,000 or more, so the second-hand value of EVs is pathetically small compared to second-hand ICE or hybrid cars
- The power grid can’t carry the electricity necessary to feed EV chargers. The boss of one motorway service station group recently claimed he was installing a few chargers, but couldn’t switch them on as there was insufficient power from the electricity grid
- If you can actually find a charger which is both switched on and (more rarely?) actually works, it takes ten to twenty times as long to charge an EV as filling a petrol tank on a ICE or hybrid car
- If you live in a flat or even a house which doesn’t have off-street parking, charging your beloved, environment-saving EV might be more than a slight problem
- Their high voltage electrical systems mean there’s a risk of electrocution, which is why mechanics must undergo specialist training to work on an EV
Exploding batteries?
But perhaps the greatest drawback of EVs is the fragility of their batteries;
- This means that even a small accident will probably lead to an EV being declared a write-off as a slightly damaged battery is a rather dangerous thing. So, either EVs will be much more expensive to insure or our rulers will prevent insurance companies from charging more for EVs so we’ll all have to pay more for our motor insurance to cover the increased cost of damaged EVs.
- If you have a few idle moments, you might consider going to YouTube and doing a search for something like ‘electric vehicle fires’ or ‘electric vehicle explosions’. The results are pretty impressive. Especially some of the films from exploding EVs in China. Unfortunately for eco-fanatics, some EV batteries spontaneously combust even when not being driven or not being charged. Though such fires are rare, when they occur they can be catastrophic. For example, they can require a tremendous amount of effort from emergency personnel to extinguish the blaze. A chain reaction inside the batteries—sometimes called ‘thermal runaway’ — can occur when the battery generates more heat than it can dissipate. Lithium-ion batteries also burn hotter and can last much longer than petrol fires, which tend to burn out quickly. Lithium-ion battery fires can take tens of thousands of gallons of water to extinguish. The U.S. National Fire Protection Association notes one EV fire in Texas required more than 30,000 gallons of water after a crash. Fire departments aren’t always equipped with trucks and other gear to deal with that. Emergency responders and firefighters must follow different response guides than for gasoline fires, and need training to properly extinguish the blaze.
Here’s a short video. It concerns a lady in the U.S. who sent her ICE Mercedes in for a service. The garage gave her a loan car – an electric Mercedes. While parked in her garage, the battery experienced ‘thermal runaway’, caught fire, completely wrecked the car and caused about $1m damage to her home:
Electric buses also seem to enjoy exploding:
Still want to buy an EV (Exploding Vehicle)?
Category: 
I read somewhere that drivers of EVs need to avoid flooded roads (or fords) as the batteries are usually low down in the car
They’d be in trouble round my way then, half the roads were flooded when I took the dog out.
I decided a while back I’ll just keep my ICE car until I get too old to drive. What concerns me is whether they’ll stop garages selling petrol before that time comes. And where am I going to get fuel for the ride on mower? With a rechargeable mower it’d take a month of Sundays to cut the grass.
Living SW London there are a lot of homes with diesel range Rover and Tesla on the front drive. This makes sense if you can afford it of course but how many average folk have the resources. Likewise I am told lots of the heat pumps are going into holiday homes and the same wealthy owners taking advantage of the generous grants.
For the rest of us it means scrapping perfectly good items long before their shelf life. Even worse it makes you more dependent on single point of failure which is electric grid. I have read when combined with a smart meter you will be rationed and only able to charge overnight. Even worse the grid can draw power from your car if the wind not blowing just right and who knows what damage to the battery all that messing around will cause.
I thought the recent BBC documentary about heat pumps dealt with a lot of other green issues and it was clear that none of the targets are achievable or affordable. There is an issue not in your list and I think not covered by the documentary which is that all the power supplies to our homes will have to be upgraded because the existing cables cannot carry the load needed to allow every home to charge cars. We will struggle to meet existing electricity demand from green electricity so where is the extra to supply cars going to come from.
The UK is definitely leading the way to a new green future where we will have nothing.
“The UK is definitely leading the way to a new green future where we will have nothing.” That’s the idea Thorpe. But “We will be happy”. Klaus Schwab has told us so! Of course EV’s will never replace the good old ICE car – unaffordable for ordinary folk, absence of charging facilities for many and – as Paul says above – once we have all been forced to have “smart meters” (I continue steadfastly to resist) power will be drained from the batteries of any EVs left on charge in order to supply domestic demand. The matter of little children being exploited in slave conditions to get lithium and cobalt out of the ground is something the virtue-signalling greenies choose not to mention of course. That oversight disgusts me more than any other aspect of the push to EVs. High time, indeed, for open discussion of the increased pollution from rubber particles and road wear caused by the excessive weight of EVs. I hadn’t considered the consequences of driving through flood water, but given that the entire floor of an EV car is actually one gigantic battery and that when electricity and water meet the consequences are unlikely to be beneficial, how that is actually going to work demands discussion! Given the tendency of EVs to spontaneously combust and the reluctance of the resultant fire to yield to conventional fire-fighting methods, it surely will be only a matter of time before every household insurer will be asking if an EV resides in the garage or even on the driveway and if the answer is “Yes” the premium will escalate to an unacceptable level. No! TPTB don’t believe for one moment that we shall all be replacing our reliable ICE cars with EVs. They know we shall have the means neither to buy one nor to charge it even if we were able to afford one. The idea is not that we shall all drive EVs. The idea is to get us off the roads and incarcerate us in 15 minute cities, reliant on bikes for those young and fit enough to ride them, and Shank’s Pony for the rest of us. Driving to London a couple of weeks ago from the South (approx 75 miles) late morning on a normal working day, when most commuters would already have completed their journeys, I was struck by the sheer volume of traffic and the number of delays caused only by congestion, not road works. Traffic volume is actually on the cusp now of being genuinely unsustainable. The forthcoming ban on ICEs is favour of EVs which many will unaffordable or unchargeable is a way of clearing the roads. Simples! For any Gvt., the present lot or the mainstream alternatives, to state otherwise is pure hypocrisy.
Dear oh dear. Why would anyone, in their right mind, ever fall for the lies? It’s beyond me.
Writing in The Sun, well known petrol-head Jeremy Clarkson highlighted the dangers of batteries used to power road going vehicles, stating that “….a fully charged e-bike contains the same explosive energy as six hand grenades.” By “e-bike”, he means of course battery-assisted pedal cycles ridden by people who like to wear Lycra.
Exploding pedalists! Whatever next?