The German economy has failed to grow for two years. Its once dominant car industry is reporting falling sales and sharply declining profits.They have spent huge sums on designing and launching battery car models, only to find customers do not want them. That was entirely predictable.
Mercedes only sold 12% of its vehicles as all electric. They now say they will make more of the petrol and diesel cars people want to buy. No wonder profits are down. Misallocated capital to battery cars has hit returns.
The whole German economy is suffering from trying to get off dependence on Russian gas, from premature closure of all nuclear power and the search for buyers for the products of the net zero revolution.
The tragedy of these decisions is that they also fail in their own terms. Importing LNG instead of producing piped gas generates far more CO 2. Destroying petrol car factories prematurely and building battery car ones boosts CO 2. Plugging a battery car or heat pump into a grid using gas or coal fired electricity adds to CO 2. Why do Net Zero enthusiasts refuse to look at the total world impact of what they are doing? Why are China and the USA, the largest CO 2 producers, still increasing?
The net zero revolution can only work when they have low carbon products people want to buy, and far more renewable power than current generators and grid systems can deliver.If renewable power is so much cheaper then investors will want to install more.
February 22, 2025
The problem of electric cars are:- too expensive, too short range, slow charging, short battery life, higher depreciation lack of charge capacity and grid capacity, heavier, more tyre wear and particulates and cause more, many especially in cities have no where to park and charge them, fire risks (especially on ferries and in tunnels or on trains…
Point in favour ? Err – Silent so better for murders perhaps? The taxation and market rigging in favour of them!
But the lack of charging capacity and grid capacity is even worse for heat pumps which nearly most of their electricity of a few winter days. Electricity that often costs 4 times as much as gas or other fuels and the heat pump may only deliver a COP of 1.5 on the very cold days (which is when you need most of the heat).
February 22, 2025
I missed off – heavier makes them more dangerous to anything or one they hit too and when they do hit something they are far more likely to be written off. This means they are more expensive to insure and even less environmental as even shorter lives. Not more expensive such EV cars put up every ones insurance not just the EV owners.
Also not so warm for long if stuck in a snow drift and the battery fires cannot be put out easily if you get one perhaps near or under you house or in the Channel tunnels or on a ferry.
February 22, 2025
How much is what you describe as ‘nearly most’?
February 22, 2025
Depends where you live and the house but for a typical heatpump in a UK house you will probably use about 60% of the electricity over the coldest 90 days as they need more heat on cold days AND the colder it is the less efficient the heat pump is. You might get 4 times as much heat as electricity in summer but only 1.5 x on cold days even less for hot water. Plus electricity is four times the cost anyway! So often tern times as much electricity on cold days as average days a huge problem for the grid!
Carla Denier (any questions) is wasting her money on one it seems? Will she claim it on PR expenses for her job? She needs loads more insulation too. She can then tell us how expensive & useless they are perhaps? Best get some thermals and an electric blanket too dear!
February 23, 2025
Acknowledged, with thanks.
February 23, 2025
Agreed. I don’t have a heat pump but consume 60% of my total heating energy between about mid December and mid February (two months). The house has a low heat loss, hence no heat is needed for it to be comfortable from early April to late October (7 months).
The outcome of what is being pushed will be a highly variable demand for electricity. Yet the only practical means to store it from season to season is large water reservoirs and very high dams (common in France, Switzerland or Italy but notably absent from England and Wales and pretty limited in Scotland).
What could possibly go wrong … ?
February 22, 2025
In the 1980s we became stuck on an Autobahn Talbrucke in the Sauerland region of Germany overnight in a January snowstorm. We were on our way to Kitzbuhel for a skiing holiday. We had all the right equipment, 4WD, winter tyres, coffee, blankets, chains, and I even had a spade in the car. I always made sure that our Mercedes estate had an almost full 90 litre fuel tank. Just as well, as we were stuck for 7 hours! The engine was kept running so we were warm as toast and although we could have continued our journey, the Autobahn was completely blocked by hundreds of trucks, unable to move through the snow. It took that long for the Polizei to create a central clear lane for cars to progress to the nearest exit.
I wonder what would happen today if we were foolish enough to be driving an EV in similar conditions ? How long would the typical EV have been able to keep the car warm and the lights on before running out of power and then have to be recovered? I literally shudder to think. How long would it take for several hundred EVs to be towed off the autobahn to charging points and for drivers to then queue up to recharge their cars ?
Small wondsr German EV sales are so poor.
February 22, 2025
You would have to put all you ski gear on or use shared bodily warms perhaps. I missed off more potholes due to extra weight and many car parks etc. will need strengthening too.
February 22, 2025
Have you seen the cost of replacement EV tyres …£207 per tyre
February 22, 2025
The first relative warm day of Feburary ….must be climate change; must tell the people what to do and tax them even more
February 22, 2025
Causes more CO2 not less I meant to say, not that a bit more CO2 is a problem! A net benefit on balance it seems.
February 22, 2025
There were Lifelogics saying something similar when the Wright brothers flew their plane on the beach.
February 22, 2025
I suspect not as when the Wright brothers flew the government didn’t impose quotas and shut down other forms of transport.
Anyone who wants an electric car should be able to own one (preferably a hybrid for range) but anyone who wants a car with an engine should equally have unlimited choice.
February 22, 2025
I agree with you to a degree.
However, the US government has helped Boeing develop technology through grants and in other ways.
However, for many consumers, Renewables isn’t just about money but also about other issues. Consumers impose their will not just in what they buy but also in the governments they vote for (whether the consumer is right or wrong – the consumer is always right).
Politician might think consumers / voters are daft but it is entrepreneurs trying to figure out how to make as much money out of Renewables but more importantly out of the technology that runs on this fuel – i.e electric cars / Elon Musk – and future related technology.
(Although some right-wing politicians like Renewables so we don’t have to reply on rogue states for our fuel but who wisely also want Renewables to be sensibly introduced that doesn’t wreck our economy).
The US government has helped Boeing develop aircraft through grants, support, and other initiatives. Boeing has also partnered with governments around the world, including the UK and the UK Aerospace Technology Institute.
February 22, 2025
The Wright Brothers understood that their plane was a prototype. They weren’t attempting to force millions of people to buy one.
The Eco Nutters attempting to impose EV cars on us seem to think that they can force expensive, impractical and inferior cars onto people who rely on their petrol-driven vehicles to run their lives. And the rest of us can use inefficient, impractical and often non-existent public transport.
Eventually the problems with EV cars MAY be resolved. But it won’t be by 2030, or even 2035.
February 22, 2025
Spot On
February 22, 2025
Federal States in the USA helped finance the construction of the railroads from which private enterprise benefitted. Big projects like this often require the support and financial assistance of government to get the show on the road. It’s myth to think that all such big projects were 100% paid for by private money.
The US played an important role in the development of Silicon Valley which companies such as Apple and Google now enjoying fruits of.
And the US government has helped Boeing and other companies develop technology.
It’s a myth to think the beginnings (and later) of big, private enterprise is necessarily 100% financed by the private sector (in some cases yes, but it other cases, clearly no).
February 22, 2025
Maybe EV technology (and the infrastructure to support it) is at just about the same level of development as the Wright Bros Ed? It could also be argued that there is already a working version of the car, whereas that was not true of the aeroplane. I am sure there are good use cases for EVs but Government is trying to force the pace of uptake and this is going to cost both jobs and taxpayers money. A slower evolution (led by consumer demand) would have made more sense and done less economic damage. EVs are clearly not as CO2 friendly as claimed if a full lifetime carbon audit is made (which Volvo did several years ago)
If you want to save the planet, encourage people to keep their existing cars for longer and keep them in good condition. I’ve owned just three cars in the past 22 years, with the current one being nearly 3 years old. I will keep it for at least another 5 years, hopefully more. Should I sell it and just lease an EV every 3 years instead? Would my carbon ‘footprint’ be lower if I did? The only thing that might be lower would be the VED and fuel taxes I pay in exchange for my 3,000 miles a year. The tax differential between ICE & EV is completely artificial, based mainly on extracting as much money as possible from the motorist, in exchange for increasingly dreadful roads.
February 23, 2025
But problem is the very pro-petrol people having meltdowns if challenged slightly about petrol.
Like I’ve said before, many times, I’m pro petrol cars – and gas and coal and nuclear fuel. But we have to throw in renewable into the mix as well. Not to crush petrol. But for the opportunities it might throw up in the future (above all, for the tech that runs on this – and not just car tech).
So my views are similar to Musk’s here. Let’s not wreck the economy with renewables but nor have a meltdown, either, about renewables or electric cars.
February 22, 2025
But the Wright brothers didn’t use a battery to power the plane
February 22, 2025
Not at all, but I would probably have said I am not going to get in one for quite a few years yet. It seems to me that hydrocarbons drilled for or artificial have a lot of advantages over current batteries.
February 22, 2025
It was quite obvious thst man would learn how to fly as we could see large birds doing it and already make large gliders all that was needed was an engine with sufficiently high power and low enough weight to either flap the wings ( or more simply power a fan/propeller).
Also it is also surely fairly obvious now that if we ever did have to cool the world there are far better ways to do so than a war on plant, tree and crop food.
February 22, 2025
There was a fatal crash was there not?
February 22, 2025
@Lifelogic – you missed off that battery EV’s are always working and consuming power. The battery has to be kept at a constant temperature. It is kept at that temperature by heating and cooling itself as required. i.e. if you charge the car then park it overnight your battery has less in it in the morning – you cant actually turn it off. People who park EV’s on the street use more electricity than those that have garage parking.
Particulates are a big problem real scientific studies show that 85% of micro plastic and pyro-plastics found in the Worlds Oceans come from tyres and brake dust being washed out to sea. it stands to reason an EV at twice the weight of the equivalent ICE is producing around twice as much(a Mini ICE is 585 kilograms (1,290 lb), Mini EV is 1,365 kg (3,009 lb))
Based on evidence we have finished up with MP’s, Parliament and an absentee Government that are all in the colloquial parlance ‘dumb nuts’. Either incapable of thinking things through or dyed in the wool political terrorists – your choice bu none, that is none of the represent the man(or woman if you don’t know what man is)
February 22, 2025
The excellent Daily Sceptic Podcast “Starmer is Contemptible” and someone else rightly described as a performing seal. Many spot on albeit rather depression.
Though he says there are no easy solution for these problems or to achieve growth. Growth solutions could be easy ditch net zero, halve government, halve taxes, cut red tape, fair competition in education, transport, banking, energy, cars, housing, incentivise work over benefits, cut low skilled immigration… but there is zero political will from the UNI Parties for growth – they just like to talk about it!
Double signing for knives and more crack downs on free speech will certainly stop future Southport events will it not Ms Cooper-Balls! Plenty in kitchen draws and they can always shoplift them anyway where there are zero deterrents.
February 22, 2025
Tried buying a knife recently LL? In shops you just see a cardboard picture of it which you need to take to the till to get the actual knife. There are none lying around to shoplift. Bought my steak knives on Amazon, had to confirm I was over 18 with my credit card (note, credit card, debit card not acceptable). Did not need to prove my identity on delivery but there again my postie knows me. Does it stop stabbings, don’t be silly…
February 22, 2025
Has not stopped the acquisition of machetes either … of course your average housewife would not know where to shop for those.
February 22, 2025
They can steal from behind tills loads of potential lethal weapons in tool and DIY shop, and kitchens, sheds and garages. I no longer life in the UK but plenty openly sale here in shops and charity shops.
February 22, 2025
The other proposal is vastly harsher sentences for carrying a knife. All of which will deter those who need knives for pursuing their innocent work/pastimes (e.g. fishing, angling, scuba diving…) in case the authorities decide they are not carrying them legally.
February 22, 2025
All you say makes sense. What is happening in Germany must be politically driven, because the German people ars not that stupid. I hope their frustrations and fears do not mirror those of 1933 and allow an unpublished agenda to be indulged to the detriment of Europe. Having said that there needs to be some radical, in current circumstances, but otherwise logical changes made to their future direction.
The situation in Germany is mirrored in the UK, but with a greater veneer of insanity. It is said that politics is the art of the possible. We have turned it on its head and made it the compulsion of the impossible at enormous current and potential cost. Any marketeer of Weetabix will tell you of the impossibility of capturing the last 20% of the breakfast market , except at great cost or with draconian compulsion. Hencs with the utter insanity of Nett Zero.
Intelligent government should say what it is trying to achieve, insentivise those tasked to achieve it, and at the end of the day it should be left in the hands of the market to give the final verdict. An uninspiring lawyer, leading a cabal of CV stretchers who have never swapped anything in the school playground to advantage, is a formula for the disaster we are daily witnessing.
It is the economy stupid !!!, backed with a sound, competitive energy policy that is the key to success in both Germany and the UK. Only then can either decide on the pace of cleaning up their corner of the planet. Germany are well ahead in this respect from personal experience, however we have the coal, gas, and oil but only if we choose to rid ourselves of the Luddites.
February 22, 2025
Follow the money it cannot be just mere “stupidity” it is surely partly corruption, buying laws that suit you, undue influence, crony capitalism… look at big Pharma and the Covid vaccines quite a lot of money to follow there!
February 22, 2025
@Agricola. It is politically-skewn in Germany, with the Greens and Left benefitting hugely from the “firewall” against the AfD. The centrist Conservatives form coalitions with the Left in order to keep the AdF from wielding power.
Eugyppius is a fine commentator on all this. He now feels that another traffic light coalition, formed by the centre right but led by the Leftist/Greens is a possibility. This is because the alternative he thinks may occur is an outright Green/Left minority government where the centre-right opposition refuse to join with the AfD in voting down government legislation.
He thinks either outcome will break the current political system and lead to more votes for the AfD. In that respect, not unlike our mad net zero policy that increases the very thing they want to reduce.
February 22, 2025
Isn’t PR just the most dangerous experiment. Politicians should have no capacity to massage the results of elections. Look at what Macron did to France!
February 22, 2025
President Macron dissolved the French Parliament and called for parliamentary elections as it is his constitutional prerogative. These were run in June/July 2024 under the two-run system in single-member constituencies. So no PR whatsoever.
This certainly created a big mess, but more likely due to the multiplicity of parties in France on the right, centre and the left. I cannot see how Pres.Macron massaged the results of the elections.
February 22, 2025
Luddites are the Greenies and those on the other extreme who are latched onto petrol/gas like onto mother’s milk.
When we should be on a mixed diet of petrol / gas / coal / nuclear / renewables – and moving cautiously about transitioning to renewables so as not to end up with an upset stomach – or in the hospital’s A & E.
February 22, 2025
Liverpool City Council have imposed an 18 month ‘experimental parking zone’ within 30 minutes walk of Everton FC new football stadium …killing off the car, all businesses and residents have to apply for limited permits ….but this new scheme isn’t just for match-days its going to be 24/7 all year round ….now that’s control
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-council-issues-new-statement-31052292
February 22, 2025
Berliner Zeitung via Business New Europe reports that “EU prepares Euro700bn aid package for Ukraine.”
“The plan is being kept secret until after the Bundestag elections as revealing that 15% of Germany’s GDP will go to Ukraine might shock voters…”
BNE adds “EU doesn’t have this money-it will simply be printed,shifting inflation directly onto Germany and the rest of the EU…….This is the sacrifice to quality of life in Europe for the sake of Ukraine and I don’t think the people will buy it.”
Still,with (ex-BlackRock) Merz likely to win……..
February 22, 2025
24th February The USA is presenting their proposed peace deal for Ukrain/Russia to the UN.
I’m sure it will be vetoed – then Trump will have his excuse and be off.
Germany going to have to stump up all its energy as well as 15% of GDP if it’s going to fight Russia …. Again.
Worked out well last time.
February 23, 2025
Would that be because the main agressor gets a ‘veto’
February 22, 2025
The problem is the currently very limited battery Technology just an expensive and heavy fuel tank in essence.
A plastic Diesel or Petrol tank costs circa £100 as a battery “tank” circa £10,000 for perhaps 1/3 of the range.
The battery “tank” lasts only a few years, takes far longer to charge, uses load of energy and mining to make, is hard to recycle, is large, heavy (making the cars 30% heavier needing stronger structure, brakes and suspensions too). (This even when empty and is even bigger issue for Reeves’ dream of electric aircraft – 4As at A level double maths but alas no physics but surely bright enough to see the engineering realities of the mad Net Zero lunacy?)
Oh and do not think any vast increases in battery tech are v. likely soon (as we have seen with electronics). It has taken about 100 years to get batteries about 4 times better. Computer chips have become up to trillion times better, smaller, cheaper, more energy efficient than early valves and this in far less than 100 years.
February 22, 2025
Most computers are just used for accounts, video games or listening to music. And I had to stop buying standard HP-like computers etc ’cause my last one broke after a month. Big commercial clustered computers cost a fortune.
So computers and electric cars are apples and pears. Anyway fossil fuel is running out / shooting up in price – and we can’t be dependant on rogue states if possibility of producing 100% of our own energy so geo-political too. And when a tonne of money to be made from electric cars and future related tech in the future and why Musk so wedded to electric. Silicon Valley / people in High Tech strongly behind the likes of him – including those who make computers – from the cheap ones to the cluster ones ..
February 22, 2025
So you don’t know about Rosebank?
February 22, 2025
Not sure what your point is. I’m pro oil / gas / coal etc. I don’t want to bust our economy. But private enterprise is always EVOLVING. And so we are at a transitional point from fossil fuels to renewables / electric car and related tech. It is bureaucrats who don’t evolve but stuck in the past like dinosaurs.
February 23, 2025
People have always been enthusiastic towards buying new tech ….we don’t need government to force it upon us
February 22, 2025
Whilst much of your criticism of EVs is valid, you rather over egg the pudding.
There are 10 year old Teslas on the market with 200,000 miles on the clock and still plenty of battery capacity. Less than when new, but still above 80%. Second hand EV batteries sell for several thousand pounds and are being bought for back up domestic power.
I watched a CarWow video on YouTube the other day. They charged 5 EVs and then drove them up motorways and A roads to see if they could reach Scotland – and to see when they ran out of power. In real world driving conditions they all reached over 80% of their claimed range and all managed 300 odd miles. The Polestar performed best. It’s worth a watch if you want some facts instead of speculation.
February 22, 2025
80% of their claimed range – wow. That means you have 20% of their claimed range to walk home. Outward journey 50%; capacity for journey home 30%; walking 20%
I’m sold!
February 22, 2025
LL I’m more optimistic than you over new battery technology. I will suggest that lithium-Ion will be out of favour by 2030. There seems to be good progress on lithium-sulfur better capacity weight for weight against lithium-Ion and quicker charging.
February 22, 2025
Concerning Mercedes, I see Reuters reports it will be launching 19 combustion engine and 17 EVs by 2027 but it is not clear if the ICE-powered vehicles will be other than hybrids, so having some electic power. At present in the UK none of its new range is pure ICE.
Hyrids have some appeal to drivers but, clearly, buyers are paying for two power sources, also reflected in maintenance costs.
February 22, 2025
Indeed hybrids are heavier (so can often use more energy to carry this weight), more complex, more expensive, more to go wrong. hybrid batteries usually get more use as smaller than EVs so might only last as little as 4 years and they are still expensive to replace £4K perhaps (and still a fire risk). Note that if you get a “plug in hybrid” then each time you plug it in is likely to save you in the range of 10p to 50p a day. So is it worth fitting the charger and plugging it in every day? Will never even save enough to pay for the charger plus this “saving” is mainly due to lack of tax on electricity and very hight taxes on petrol and diesel.
Some lawyers etc. charge £1000+ an hour so it certainly will not make much sense for them to bother plugging them in or installing a charger! Not our Goverment have forced people to put EV chargers in new houses! Pushing up inflation yet again for no reason.
February 22, 2025
Despite charging these absurdly high hourly fees we still get absurdly unsafe convictions like the 15? for Lucy Letby and endless other insanities from Judges, juries and dire leave to appeal courts!
February 22, 2025
You do talk some nonsense. The batteries in Toyota’s hybrids (I have one) are warranted for 15 years if you get the car serviced by Toyota. My car, notwithstanding the extra weight, does 60 mpg in all driving conditions.
February 22, 2025
My most modern car, a 2019 Audi A7 3 litre, twin turbocharged diesel four door coupe, is a brilliant car but has so much expensive and superfluous technology dictated by EU regulations to reduce emissions. Just as well that I obtained a truly enormous discount when I bought it new!
It has stop-start which makes the 12v starting battery cost £275 – more than 2.5 times more expensive than a conventional one. The car also has an extra 4.5kW lithium ion battery onder the boot floor, designed just to keep the all-electrical ancilliaries going so it can very occasionally coast going downhill on a motorway! I have seen this in operation twice in 38,000 miles. The extra battery will have to be replaced at some point : cost? Over £2,000. How much the switch to electric ancilliaries contributed to the cost of the car, I have no idea.
The fuel saving from all this technology is completely out of all proportion to its cost- probably by a factor of several thousand to one. Yet it was forced on manufacturers by idiots in Brussels
February 22, 2025
I drive a hybrid. I use the electric around town where I can get a bit of energy back in stop-start traffic and petrol during long journey’s. I am currently averaging over 70mpg which is on a par with some diesels but less cost.
February 22, 2025
Most computers are just used for accounts, video games or listening to music. And I had to stop buying standard HP-like computers etc ’cause my last one broke after a month. Big commercial clustered computers cost a fortune.
So computers and electric cars are apples and pears. Anyway fossil fuel is running out / shooting up in price – and dependant on rogue states to a degree anc
February 22, 2025
Yes but the cost saving is main artificial due to lower taxes on electricity and is lost on cost of the extra depreciation and financing etc. of a more expensive car and battery.
February 23, 2025
I am not an fanatic of Hybrids like Sakara Gold is with EV’s. I can see their advantages and disadvantages. I just know how to use it to mine and would never say that they are for everybody.
What I object to about the governments attitude towards the car is that it is more based of flawed ideology that fact and as such limits CHOICE. And that artificial limitation is damaging to industry AND the enviroment.
Reply If you buy a battery car and plug it in to recharge they burn more gas in a power station to supply you. How does that help?
February 22, 2025
Good morning.
As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.
The EV Car thing was not market led. EV’s do have a place in the market, but it is a ‘niche’ market. ie small city car.
The big problem with EV’s is the stuff the batteries are made of. They are not common and located in only a few places on Earth, with the Chinese very much ahead in the control and processing.
Governments can legislate all they want, but the market, of which the consumer is key, will always win in the end.
February 22, 2025
The market and the laws of physics and current technology. Pushing out premature tech. using subsidies and tax breaks just litters the place with loads of duff premature tech. The correct order is R&D get something that works and is cost effective and the roll it out to then willing customers. Not tax them to death to subsidise others duff tech.
February 22, 2025
Last Thursday, the RSPB released an academic study in conjunction with the University of Cambridge which demonstrated that solar farms provide huge biodiversity benefits in areas with arable farms. The research found that – hectare for hectare – solar farms situated in East Anglia contained a greater number of bird species and overall number of individuals than surrounding arable land.
Those solar farms, which were managed for nature and had hedgerows around the edges and no grass cutting, supported more birds even than those that were constantly sheep-grazed
The highest abundance of threatened red and amber listed bird species (such as corn bunting, skylark, yellowhammer and linnet) was in the solar farms that were managed for nature. Biodiversity was significantly higher than in both surrounding arable land and in the solar sites that were grazed and did not contain hedgerows.
The government should include a new means-tested support scheme for solar panels in the upcoming warm homes plan. This should really get the rooftop solar revolution going and ensure that the consumer benefits from this simple cost-effective net zero transition are not restricted to wealthy households
Reply We need to grow more food.
February 22, 2025
That would be the same RSPB which is quite content for an unknown number of rare raptors and seabirds to be destroyed by the occasionally reasonably useful windmills?
Arable land, growing food, is perfectly capable of sustaining bio-diversity; there is nothing magical about having solar panels on the land.
We can, of course, generate electricity by other means than solar panels which only work for about 25% of the time in the UK (due to winter, night-time and poor weather). We can’t grow food without farmland.
February 22, 2025
Mr Cold wants to put the Diet Industry out of business.
February 22, 2025
Donna :
Solar is even worse than you think. The capacity factor is only 11% in the south of the UK and of course it does not produce energy when it’s needed – in winter and at night. Solar is really only useful for hot, sunny climates where it can produce electricity during the day to run air conditioning units.
February 23, 2025
I stand corrected. I was being optimistic 🙂
February 22, 2025
Fine for climates where sunshine is guaranteed. On a dull UK winter’s day it won’t even produce enough to keep appliances on overnight standby.
February 22, 2025
It would be interesting to find out the cost to biodiversity of producing the solar panels and batteries elsewhere and mining the raw materials. Would we be able to show a net benefit globally, or would we be stealing biodiversity from elsewhere to improve our own?
February 22, 2025
Also the argument is clearly bogus. You could have no solar cells (and use natural gas) and then the whole field could be hedges and bird friendly plants, trees and bushes growing far more food for birds.
And do not get me onto those raptor, bird, insect and bat exploding rotating crucifixes.
February 22, 2025
SG:
We need more CO2 in the atmosphere to promote plant growth and grow more food. Both temperature and CO2 are at historically low levels and we need more CO2 in the atmosphere to prevent CO2 dropping below the minimum level for plants to survive the next time we have an ice age. Shula & Ott have demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally there is no greenhouse effect from the greenhouse gases at the planet’s surface and the Antarctic Vostok ice core data over the last 450,000 years shows CO2 following temperature.
February 22, 2025
The report study did not compare like with like nor compare with bird populations upon so called reserves. The factor disregarded was that the solar farms are rarely visited whereas nature reserves and agricultural land is visited by the general public , often with dogs without control.Many agricultural areas are richer in bird life than RSPB reserves as there is more food available and less predators.
February 22, 2025
Recently a scientist visitor to a museum where I volunteer explained to me that his company do energy audits on various items and had recently done one on domestic solar panels. Totalling up the energy required for mining and processing raw materials, transport and manufacture, transport to installation site (almost halfway round the world in most cases), removal and recycling at end of useful life, far exceeded the total energy those panels would produce in their life time.
There are an increasing number of Data Centres globally and one I know of in the Thames Valley has an electric bill of £750,000 per month. How many wind turbines are we going to need to construct to attempt to keep up with demand?
February 22, 2025
“…the RSPB released an academic study…”.
I wonder how objective that is, then?
February 22, 2025
SG :
Why do you always change the subject?
I thought you were going to let us know how your granddaughter was getting on with the cheap ev you bought for her?
February 23, 2025
Watching the latest addition of Harry’s Farm, a real farmer who grows food for a living and is very much part of country life, he has had solar panels fitted. The results of which were not very impressive.
February 22, 2025
It’s a wider problem than the product (electric cars), as your piece so well illustrates.
Fundamentally it’s all due to government intervention in the market, stemming for a nasty brew of ideology (green, marxist), profiteering and authoritarian power-consolidation.
February 22, 2025
People want the freedom of choice, people don’t trust or believe our politicians/government ….the government would’ve progressed further with its E plans if they’d banned it …the people’s lack of trust is so high that the people would do the opposite of government doctrine (the people are in fear of 1984)
February 22, 2025
+1
February 22, 2025
Net zero policy as a politically inspired market initiative, supported by taxation, legislation and regulation is failing because it is stupid. It is obvious to most people that exporting CO2 producing activities to China and elsewhere and claiming it is “saved” is stupid. More and more realise that previous claims about global catastrophe being caused by CO2 emissions are stupid. Except, it seems, most MPs. The solution is to remove the discrimination between EVs and ICE vehicles and let the market sort it out. If solid state batteries work they will make EVs for competitive because they will save weight, extend range and offer faster charging times. Some people will then be free to make their own choice.
February 22, 2025
Modern jet fighters began from the Wright brothers flying a plane on a beach that looked like something from Those Magnificent Men on their Flying Machines. And there were lots of hiccups getting from the beach to rocketing over the sea. But clean electric tech (not just cars) from clean renewable fuel is inevitable for lots of commercial reasons.
The current US’s plans to get lots of lithium etc from Ukraine would be a big boost to the battery issue and the electric-car industry in general. Not that I support the Americans here -for moral / geo-political reasons.
February 22, 2025
So it’s all jam tomorrow, Ed? Isn’t that a problem, though, when people are expected to pay *today*? I mean, for ideologically driven but expensive innovations such as heat pumps, EVs, solar pumps etc. I don’t recall reading that people in the early 20th c. were pushed by their governments into buying Wright brothers’ flying machines.
February 22, 2025
Elon Musk and Tesla isn’t ideological …
February 22, 2025
Remind me how many ordinary households own a modern jet fighter?
February 23, 2025
Ordinary householders buy tickets to fly on jet planes to Lanzarote, Ibiza and Corfu ..
February 22, 2025
The biggest lithium deposits are under Russian control.The Russians may deign to sell them to Trump in return for…..
February 22, 2025
Yes Ed – but 1903 to 1952 is a span of nearly 50 years (with two World Wars to help spur technical advancement). Usable EVs have been around for less than 10 years. The Government didn’t try to force commuters off trains and onto planes in 1913 (and then try telling everyone that they could only fly after 1923).
I’m sure that transport technology will greatly improve over the next 40 years – especially in terms of self-driving cars (and driverless trains of course). Whether the “EV” as we currently know it (with heavy/expensive batteries) will be the future remains to be seen. If someone produces an affordable & practical “jet fighter” EV in my lifetime, then I will certainly consider it, if I’m still driving by then. At the moment, the ‘Wright Brothers’ still have a lot of work to do. The only thing I know for certain is that I won’t be around in 2065 to see what happened.
February 22, 2025
But your view of tech is very old-fashioned – Newtonian-ish. When the world of the most sophisticated tech today is now becoming more and more like Quantum Physics. That’s your problem. That’s your error. You need to upgrade your tech thinking to the newest version.
February 22, 2025
I’ve learned to keep my “tech thinking” grounded in reality Ed. Everything is possible but it’s best to focus on what is likely.
February 23, 2025
The UK needs to stay head of the game in tech – for both peace and prosperity.
Countries such as Russia are now, and in next few years, are developing highly advanced hypersonic missiles and drones that we need to be able to defend against.
And companies in China (and USA) are creating technology that is going to have a profound impact on the economy, jobs and the wealth of our nation (or not).
It’s like a war out there in the tech world to create the newest and best technology for war and peace.
So we can’t afford to have people such as yourself scoffing at how quickly tech is advancing today. And politicians need to plan for that.
February 23, 2025
If your ‘tech thinking’ is so grounded in reality then how come governments around the world – USA / UK / China / Russia etc – have already spent billions / planing to spend billions on funding Quantum Research?
(And not forgetting how private enterprise also doing the same – from Elon Musk to Microsoft etc).
February 22, 2025
This is a very complicated topic which lots of different branches to it – and related topics. But let’s look at Quantum Computing versus Transistor-based computing (this is HUGE).
So computers today work using transistors (on-off switches) which using binary bits. But Quantum computers use Qubits which take advantage of uncertainty principle. It gets complicated but essentially todays computer chips with highest number transistors has 2.6 trillion of them where as the most powerful quantum computer has only 66 Quibits. To try and simplify / put into context, some physicists today argue that the latest Chinese quantum computing unit is 100 trillion times faster than the world’s fastest supercomputer, despite the small number of Qubits.
But there is still a way to go before Quantum computing becomes practical. But nevertheless, this is where we’re sort of at at the moment. The advance is staggering and in so many different related fields of practical physics / technology. It’s like you’re stuck in the past. Your science is out of date.
February 22, 2025
Regarding your overly Newtonian-like focus on modern technology, I think you should be reading around more into QUANTUM ENGINEERING / TECHNOLOGY and how this is HUGE – and the HUGE impact on our economy and world in general in the near future and future in general. This is the kind of thing that Elon Musk is tapping into. I bet Trump probably had no idea about Quantum Eng / Tech until Musk told him about it and why it is going to be HUGE – and changes everything. I suspect vast majority of Tory and Reform MPs haven’t a clue about Quantum Eng / Tech even though it’s going to have a profound impact on our economy and life in general. And I’m talking about Quantum Eng / Tech in the context ultimately of private companies building the tech of the future (as opposed to a topic that is academic or something).
February 23, 2025
QUANTUM BATTERIES
(Still in early stages but scientists looking hard into this – and real game changer if works, making petrol cars look like something from the Middle Ages)
– Battery that charges almost instantly
– Holds far more energy than today’s batteries
This battery tech taps into quantum stuff (weird stuff such as entanglement and superposition)
February 23, 2025
Jam Tomorrow
February 23, 2025
You just have a very Netownian-like concept of the world, science, engineering and technology, then. And which certainly goes against the entrepreneurial-like spirit of people such as Elon Musk and others who are hiring quantum engineers and technologies to create this quantum tech for the future.
February 23, 2025
I’ve just been doing more research into. All the leading IT companies and governments and Cambridge University (and I’m sure other leading university) are investing billions in quantum technology overall. Mainly quantum computing, from what I gather, but also to a degree, quantum batteries (and other quantum tech).
This is huge for scientists, entrepreneurs and governments.
Scientists – because of the sheer thrill of making quantum physics practical (and not just physicists involved but also chemists and biology).
Entrepreneurs – because there is so much money to be potentially made from this (computing, car batteries – but way more technologies, also.
Governments. Because they want to help private enterprise as well as the role of quantum technology in defence, and other reasons.
February 22, 2025
You can recycle well over 90% of the materials in a Lithium-Ion battery so maybe in the short term do this rather than waste time and money on carbon capture.
February 22, 2025
The real problem is that man-made climate change and net zero are scams designed by globalists to control the masses and further enrich themselves.
February 22, 2025
Globalists are ultimately capitalists following where the money is. Not ex-KGB, James-Bond villains with a grand plan to rule the world .. It’s easily primarily about money not politics.
February 22, 2025
BTW, how do we respond to Russia who might well spend their time over the next 5 years greatly ramping up their their armed forces and hypersonic missiles and drones – in New sophisticated ways and in far greater ways whilst ramping up their cyber terrorism and subtle KGB-style terrorism in general trying to subtly destroy their enemies’ physical infrastructure and more, using biology, chemistry and physics in the process.
The UK is quickly moving into Dad’s Army in comparison. And no longer like Lord Nelson but a sitting duck, with the USA tucked far away in every sense across the Atlantic.
I bet you now our armed forces and secret services are greatly concerned.
February 22, 2025
Sorry, Ed. You’re behind the times: Russia has been doing that for the last three years already, spurred on by NATO’s desire for conflict in Ukraine. The problem that NATO has created for itself is that Russia, by rising to the challenge, has become the most experienced, best-equipped army in Europe. Well done Joe Biden. The best thing we can do now is to dial down the confrontation for a fair number of years, so that Russia has to scale back its unaffordably high military expenditure. Then we might achieve parity, if that’s what you want.
February 22, 2025
‘Sorry, Ed. You’re behind the times: Russia has been doing that for the last three years already, spurred on by NATO’s desire for conflict in Ukraine’ – that’s Russian propaganda. Putin is a Machiavellian despot. Stop supporting him.
‘The problem that NATO has created for itself is that Russia, by rising to the challenge, has become the most experienced, best-equipped army in Europe’ – then why didn’t they take over Ukraine in what was meant to take two or three days?
The point is they have learnt from their mistakes to a degree. And will use Trump’s assistance as succour to give them time and opportunity to build a much bigger, more deadly armed force.
‘Well done Joe Biden’ – and now Trump.
‘The best thing we can do now is to dial down the confrontation for a fair number of years’ – whilst Putin builds a much bigger armed and deadly armed force – threatening in the future not just Europe militarily but causing real disruption to the American economy.
February 22, 2025
So Machiavellian-despot Putin is the real problem – not anything you’ve said here. And he’s not an easy problem to deal with. That’s the reality.
February 22, 2025
Correct.
February 22, 2025
Agreed Brian.
February 22, 2025
CO2 is critical to life. Thank God China and the USA are increasing output. GREEN Johnson-the-Destroyer had to restart a factory making CO2 during lockdown, because you can’t make fertiliser without it.
We need to tell these moronic fools that they are wrong. We can’t just appease them all the time, even if we fool them into doing the right thing.
February 22, 2025
The WEF thinks it can impose Net Zero and the Eco-lunacy on us. They have not yet accepted that whilst they can pass laws to ban petrol cars, they can’t pass laws which make people buy electric ones. The same applies to heat pumps and all the rest of their plans to reduce our standard of living and transfer wealth. All they are doing is destroying the economies where the Net Zero lunacy is being pushed most forcefully (predominantly Germany and the UK).
The German people are not going to meekly accept the de-industrialisation of their country and their premier industries being destroyed by the Net Zero lunacy, the way the Brits sadly have.
Blair’s Institute has just released a report saying that Red Ed’s claims about future “green jobs” don’t stack up and must be scaled back. Whilst I despise the Great Liar, he knows that Reform’s opposition to the “green tyranny” is going to resonate in the old industrial heartlands of the UK, where they are already taking huge chunks out of the Labour vote.
February 22, 2025
Once again I have to point out the glaring truth.
Co2 is 0.04% of Earths atmosphere. The UK contributes <1% of that (0.0004%)
Crippling industry with intermittent high priced energy. Leaving the less well off unable to heat their homes. Risking blackouts that will affect everything from you watching TV to someone in the middle of an operation, seems to be the price Milliband/Greta and the whole Green loony movement want us to pay, in order to save a tiny amount of Co2, which of course will be taken up by China/America/India and the Far East, in weeks.
All this idiocy for nothing more than self-righteous meaningless bragging rights to the rest of the world, who aren't being as stupid as us.
And just to boost the desireability of Electric cars !! The half-wit previous government introduced 'road-tax' for them from this year. And the totally inncompetent rabble in power now, have done nothing to change that.
You couldn't make it up !
February 23, 2025
Back when I was a lad the joke about government was; “If they could tax the air we breath they would “! Fast forward to today and they have found such a way. And boy are they making hay (tax money) whilst the Sun (CO2 SCAM) shines.
February 22, 2025
The Climate Alarmist religion does not consider economic truth as being a relevant part of their concerns or is something they need to consider when promoting policy.
Germany is a classic example of a nation captured by flawed policy.
The UK will be the first major economy to fail due to flawed policy based on nonsense Net Zero fixation. Germany will be next and will fall from a much greater height.
The remnants of these once mighty world influential economies, will be picked over by incoming cultures that have zero allegiance to the history of Europe.
The future of Europe thanks to Net Zero and other profoundly wrong but perceived to be virtuous policies, will be anything but respectful of the traditional European culture scattered in ruins on the floor of history.
February 22, 2025
In the scheme of things governments are not worried what type of cars they will eventually ban from the roads. EV’s are their preference but their plan anyway is to make car use so difficult that we will all happy to live within our 15 minute smart cities.
Good question because that is a big part of ABSOLUTE ZERO planning, which tells us that shipping and freight aircraft will have to become green or stopped altogether, but being hypocrites they ignore that aspect when they want to.
Since blair declared that no money should be spent on new roads we have suffered over-use of roads across the country. What used to be a pleasure is daily now a real chore. That was something planned well in advance to manipulate our thinking about cars, and punish us for wanting that freedom.
The whole point is that they intend to keep pushing netzero, gradually removing our options, our freedoms and our ability to live our lives without constraints until cars will be only used by the political elites, who will still of course use their private jets to get to their never ending series of jollies.
February 22, 2025
“Why do Net Zero enthusiasts refuse to look at the total world impact of what they are doing?”
For the same reason many people still hold the line that a high level of immigration is a financial benefit.
We have a large minority of people who believe these things. When you give them the facts in plain mathematics their brains go into a kind of “does not compute” mode. They cannot dispute the facts and so they go into a fairly aggressive illogical defensive mode.
I think they are brainwashed.
February 22, 2025
An article by Michael Julien prompted by Taxpayer’s Alliance and a report by General Sir Gordon Messenger, former vice chief of the defence staff, who lead a probe in 2022 into health and social care in a bid to drive up efficiency and improve performance, exposes the lack of investment by the NHS on things that matter.
We all know from multiple TPA analysis that the NHS wastes so much money on woke and diversity – Perhaps it is due a sustained attack to make it change it’s ways.
February 22, 2025
I agree the battery is not the answer
Green Hydrogen is on its way which will heat our homes
Cars
Aviation
Shipping
February 22, 2025
Hydrogen is the answer, only if you believe in climate change/ net-zero ……whats wrong with fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine
February 22, 2025
As it happens I have just sent this letter to our local newspaper:
“In a letter that you kindly published last summer I suggested that interested readers should put the title “Decline is everywhere after 24 years of poor policy choices” into google and look at the chart of per capita GDP back to 1955 reproduced in that article, with its clear break point in 2008.
(Viewpoint July 26 2024, “Driving with handbrake on for past 16 years”)
Using the most recent official data I find that since 2008 GDP growth has been only 1.1 percent a year on average, compared to 2.7 percent a year during the previous sixty years, that is going back to 1948, and if the previous growth rate had continued our GDP would now be 28% higher.
It seems that something happened around 2008 which caused long term damage to our economic growth potential, and while some may be tempted to blame it on Brexit that cannot be the answer because whatever its economic effects may have been they have certainly not been retroactive.
No doubt some people will wax indignant at the suggestion, but surely we should not exclude the possibility that the new economically debilitating factor which emerged at that time was the Climate Change Act? The effects of which were intensified in 2019. Or is that just a coincidence?”
Yours faithfully
February 22, 2025
The GFC? And it affected not only the UK:
bigeconomics.org ‘The countries most and least affected by the 2008 financial crisis’
stlouisfed.org 13/10/2015 ‘Recovery from the Great Recession has varied around the world’
ec.europa.eu 23/10/2019 ‘Economic recovery of EU regions after 2008’
I hope that the editor of your local newspaper is nice to you and doesn’t publish your ‘interesting’ pensum.
February 23, 2025
A country cannot embark on deindustrialisation without that affecting its economy to a greater or lesser extent.
But thanks for the references.
February 23, 2025
I’ve now looked at those articles and none of them explain why 16 years after the event the UK economy has still not returned to its previous long term trend growth rate. Not to its previous GDP or per capita GDP, but to its trend growth rate. As I said: “It seems that something happened around 2008 which caused long term damage to our economic growth potential”, and if anything your references about the speed of recovery in the aftermath of the global financial crisis may make the longer term damage more difficult to explain.
February 22, 2025
When you buy a cordless drill it comes with two batteries, as the power dissipates quickly, and when both batteries are ‘un’ chargeable the whole drill is often binned as the cost of replacement batteries is the same as a new drill.
And therein lies the problem, batteries are costly, limited by use/time with high wastage/scrape material when discarded
My thirty year old corded black n’ decker drill is still working just fine …our government would want me to replace it for net-zero
February 22, 2025
There are plenty of investors for renewable power because our government pays such high prices for the electricity generated. It is a wealth transfer from the average Joe consumer to the wealthy investor.
February 22, 2025
Drax is doing quite well out of the renewable subsidy scam
February 22, 2025
If I were German why would I want to buy an electric car which is banned from using some underground and multi-storey car parks (due to the fire risk and weight) ? When Reform said they would ban dangerous grid-scale battery storage there was lots of scoffing from commentators and other MPs – all scientifically illiterate – apparently entirely unaware of the recent Monterey fire in USA and similar incidents. A big battery plant that can be entirely and permanently destroyed within a few hours hardly increases our energy security.
February 22, 2025
Grid scale battery storage is a mad idea, driven only by ideology. If you really want to store surplus renewable energy for use at a later date, do it with compressed air. The materials needed are far cheaper than what’s required in battery technology and the volume of the plant is about the same. A lot gets wasted in the exchange cycle, but that is the penalty of any energy storage process.
February 22, 2025
Net Zero, as practiced by the Greens and the Left, has nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with finding a belief system to replace and bury our Christian heritage.
February 22, 2025
Germany’s story as you tell it, sounds depressingly familiar. I am awaiting the verdict of Germany’s voters with considerable interest.
February 22, 2025
All these lame Politicos trying to manipulate populations, with malicious Laws and Penalties before they had a viable sustainable alternative in place was always going to end in tears.
The net result of these NetZero terrorists is they have increased World CO2 output by another magnitude. The complete opposite of their Marxist preaching. While they were at it, they increased financial pressure on all those that are forced to pay. They are killing their ‘golden goose’
If EV’s were good, and they may be in certain situations people would buy them. My understanding is the bulk of EV’s sold in the UK are a Company perk thing, not people spending their own hard earned cash. The result is the taxpayer those that cant afford a car let alone a new car is subsidising those with money to splash around, real Socialism!
February 22, 2025
Everything LL says about EVs is true but the plain facts are that their suitability for the German market was never thought through :
We lived in Germany for five years in the 1980s and one of the cars we currently own is a 1984 Mercedes 500SEL.
This car was from the period when Mercedes cars were at their very pinnacle of quality, performance and reliability.
When it was new, our Mercedes was Germany’s most expensive production limousine and it shows today. It cost me just £7,000 last October., A retired motoring journalist friend of mine calls it our “Colossus of Roads.”
Distances between major cities in Germany are often substantial, so business people often do return trips of 500 miles in a day, as I did back then. We have friends whose families live in flats in Hambourg, some 275 miles away and being a flat, have no charging point. No EV for them or their parents !
Germans think nothing of driving from their home in the North to Austria for a winter skiing holiday, or to Italy for their main summer break. Even in the 1980s, we often had to queue at Autobahn petrol stations in the middle of a winter’s night on our way down to Kitzbuhel, a 600 mile journey, such was the volume of people on the road overnight. You just would not consider doing that today in any EV.
In fact, only one person I know in Germany owns an EV: he has a business installing solar panels and, unsurprisingly, he uses his wife’s Tesla model 3 to visit potential local clients. At the weekend, and for holidays, the family go everywhere in his Mercedes 3 litre diesel E classe estate.
The poor EV sales figures in Germany are certainly no a surprise to me.
February 22, 2025
They know that evs are expensive, impractical and dangerous and that the mining of the materials for batteries and their disposal is environmentally unsound.
They also know that they will not be able to generate sufficient electricity using renewables for replacing all ices with evs. Also that only 1 in 7 households can own an ev because local grids can only supply 1 – 2KW/household continuously as explained by engineer Steve Broderick in written evidence to the HoC Business & Trade Select Committee:
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/82722/pdf/
The lack of grid capacity also makes cheap electricity when the wind is blowing and for all households to be converted to heat pumps an impossibility.
The ev mandate will also of course mean the end of our motor industry as the far fewer vehicles needed are supplied more cheaply by coal-fired China.
Socialism depends upon people remaining poor and the CAGW scam with its Net Zero “solution” to sabotage the economy is intended to achieve this goal.
February 22, 2025
John you talk much sense.
You should go into politics
February 22, 2025
In the Media
Government team reportedly conceded that full alignment with EU’s food safety regulations is required to ease agricultural exports to bloc.
China, the USA, Brazil in a nutshell the rest of the World does not have to be subjected to the EU, and the ECJ in their own Country. Yet under Labour direction they are contemplating the UK will be.
Where are the UK Sovereign Law makers, where is the UK’s democratically elected Legislators?
That right they are absent, they need foreign unelected unaccountable fools to tell them what to do,
This is on top of Guido’s observation
Starmer’s 92 EU surrender staff have been busy working on their path to steer Britain back to Brussels, with The Times reporting Labour plans to sign the UK up to an “Australian-style” Youth Mobility Scheme with the EU – reopening the door to free movement. Despite repeated assurances from the government that Britain wouldn’t join, Labour is preparing to let tens of thousands of 18-30-year-olds from the EU live and work here. Which obviously comes with concessions…
As Guido has said, this deal comes with a huge price tag. UK negotiators have reportedly caved to EU demands on food safety alignment and carbon “cap and trade” allowances – all under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
https://order-order.com/2025/02/21/uk-to-take-ecj-jurisdiction-in-eu-mobility-deal-surrender/
Complete capitulation and giving up on by our absentee UK PM and Government “Submitting to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and accepting EU regulations, while having no say whatsoever over those regulations”
February 22, 2025
“Why do Net Zero enthusiasts refuse to look at the total world impact of what they are doing?”
They have committed so much reputational and emotional capital – granted with other people’s money – in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming that admitting the truth would destroy them. They have no way back and they know it. The only way for them is onward.
February 22, 2025
German elections today may show what the people think about Net Zero nonsense. EVs are a classic example of the government trying to force people to buy what they don’t want.
Here in the UK we need to urgently increase defence spending, so drop all the net zero spending and transfer to it to the armed forces.
February 22, 2025
The problem is deluded politicians trying to force their policy onto unwilling customers using/wasting the taxpayers own money to bribe them into submission/acceptance
February 22, 2025
I’d like to see a cost/benefit analysis of the public EVs ie the police cars, nhs ambulance and local bus service ? Could anyone please highlight a study ?
February 22, 2025
I’d like to see trolleybuses back again. We had them in Portsmouth though I’m too young to remember them. No expensive battery (just a small lead acid type would do to get round diversions) and removes emissions from town centres.
February 23, 2025
Town Centres ARE cleaner now that at any other time in recent history
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65c0d15863a23d0013c821e9/2022-final-greenhouse-gas-emissions-statistical-release.pdf
February 22, 2025
To compound the issue
“BMW has halted a £600m overhaul of its Oxford Mini factory amid sluggish electric vehicle (EV) sales, throwing the future of the site into doubt.”
They will off course continue to import the mini electric from China, unless of course the Government forces the Taxpayer to cough up more millions of their money. The blackmail of the modern multi-national. They all do it ‘so why shouldn’t we’
Its the consequence of permitting take-overs for some to remove their competition instead of encouraging actual competition
February 22, 2025
Another Luton ……
February 22, 2025
I’m currently in Florida. There’s no sign of a net zero revolution here. There’s hardly any EVs, very few charging points, huge gas guzzling cars on the roads, public transport is poor and they are still using plastic bags in the supermarkets. I thing Europe has been duped into committing industrial suicide to give the rest of the world a competitive edge. Our politicians past and present are utter fools.
February 22, 2025
Same situation in the Caribbean when we were there recently, and given the short journey distances, and stop and start journeys, it would perhaps be ideal situation if people wanted and could afford them.
February 23, 2025
Chrixtine, you are absolutely right. We have been completely conned by all of our political parties with the sole exception of Reform, which is why I joined the party as soon as the make up of the new Conservative party in westminster became obvious. It is now more than ever, made up of members who should rightly be in a Lib-Dim party if it had a more sensible leader. Badenoch should never have been elected leader, but frankly who else is there?
Reform is literally the only hope we have left to get rid of Wokeness, avoid Net Zero bankrupcy and to get our economy back onto a sane and realistic path to growth. Ridding us of Miliband’s insanity would at least release enough money to boost our defence budget.
February 23, 2025
We have been saying this on here for years !
February 22, 2025
Thisismoney.co.uk 17/01/2025 ‘EVs 50% cheaper to run than a petrol car … but with a higher upfront cost here’s how many years you’ll need to drive it to break even’
carbonbrief.org 24/10/2023 ‘Factcheck: 21 misleading myths about electric vehicles’
February 22, 2025
Just looking at your first claim hefner, you missed off the most important caveat of that article.
It said, it was 50% cheaper only as long as you charge from home.
It also calculated the electricity cost of 5p per kwh for a home charger which seems very low to me.
It finished saying that of the two cars it used for comparison, one petrol one electric, the electric one cost over 25% more and they said it would take 6 years to make up the difference.
February 23, 2025
Sam
Even if you got electric at 5p/kWh you can only charge it :
a) at night at that rate, with daytime costs much, much higher.
b) at a charge rate of 7kW max which would take hours for pure EV’s and at least 4 hours for my hybrid with a battery of 10.8kW.
The whole thing is totally skewed.
February 23, 2025
MarkB
I totally agree.
February 24, 2025
You cannot make an economic case for any EV based on charging costs, and when depreciation is included, the cost of “ownership” is completely off the scale. Never mind the well-discussed inconveniences of running any EV. All this is before you cost in the fact that when you have too, charging away from home is far more inconvenient and expensive than buying a tank of petrol or diesel.
In my view, unless you are running a very small car, the most efficient and cost effective is still a diesel.
That is why we are keeping my wife’s 22 year old Mercedes A Klasse (64,000 miles without fault) and my 2019 Audi A7 which is a superb vehicle for crossing the continent at 50mpg and a range of 650 miles.
You could make a case for a small hybrid but look back only a few years and these now cost twice the price of a 1 litre Fiesta, which was the most popular car in Britain, but stupidly discontinued by Ford !
Given the lack of interest in EVs by private buyers, that looks to be a huge mistake.
Will May’s climate change act go down as the most stupid bit of legislation ever ?
February 22, 2025
Carbon Brief told us that renewables were 9 times cheaper than gas when gas spiked as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It wasn’t true then and it certainly is not true today even if the Green Party MP for Waveney Valley repeats it again on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday show on 16/02 (at !:34). And if renewables were 9 times cheaper than gas why do they still require to be subsidised?
February 22, 2025
Trump is starting to sound like Haw Haw with his nightly rant to the world and BBC and Sky are facilitating it.. everybody is sick according to him.. on and on.. awful stuff
February 22, 2025
“Why do Net Zero enthusiasts refuse to look at the total world impact of what they are doing?”
The irrationality of Net Zero is proof that for many Net Zero is a religion. With innumerate policymakers it certainly isn’t based upon science or even just common sense.
February 23, 2025
To add to their woes, I have it on good authority (direct from a Porsche Service Manager), that the company is having to replace a significant number of batteries in their flagship £100,000 Taycan EVs to keep customers’ cars on the road.
The fact than the Audi eTron GT uses exactly the same powertrain would indicate that Audi are having to do the same, although it seems that despite extensive advertising, sales of the spectacular looking eTron GT have been extremely poor. Hardly surprising when it is similar in size and style to my A7, yet costs 40% more and has a very poor range – around a third of my A7’s 650 miles. Definitely not my idea of a GT car!
Reply I read that there have been Taycan and Audi recalls for possible battery short circuiting.
February 23, 2025
Christine, you are absolutely right. We have been completely conned by all of our political parties with the sole exception of Reform, which is why I joined the party as soon as the make up of the new Conservative party in westminster became obvious. It is now more than ever, made up of members who should rightly be in a Lib-Dim party if it had a more sensible leader. Badenoch should never have been elected leader, but frankly who else is there?
Reform is literally the only hope we have left to get rid of Wokeness, avoid Net Zero bankrupcy and to get our economy back onto a sane and realistic path to growth. Ridding us of Miliband’s insanity would at least release enough money to boost our defence budget.