I am an electrician and trained charge point installer.
(Rolec and Pod Point).
I am also a vehicle enthusiast and general petrol head, I have owned 39 vehicles in my lifetime and I’m not 50 yet!
I do my own repairs and servicing wherever I can.
I am also an ex cyclist (change of jobs and ill health forced me to stop).
I am a non smoker, I have never smoked and despite this I have been diagnosed with emphysema.
I can only attribute this to years of cycling in heavy rush hour traffic.
I’m still reasonably fit however with a good lung capacity from cycling so it doesn’t really affect me (not looking for sympathy here.)
I really do think that air pollution has gone too far mainly because too many people are driving too many miles.
We are being told that the answer to this is electric vehicles, with which I massively disagree.
It’s as big a lie as the diesel scam / scandal was.
I often thought to myself if VW where cheating who else was too? It turned out Mercedes was, but I’m pretty sure all Diesel engines from that time of similar power and capacity produce similar pollutants.
So the answer is electric? Well no I don’t think it is at all.
All electric vehicles do is move the pollution elsewhere, what’s the point of having ‘green’ city centres when the Scottish coast has been turned to power stations (only and small percentage of U.K. electricity is from genuinely renewable sources, but even then what are the environmental costs of making and installing wind farms?)
So let’s improve things now, with the technology we already have.
Not 2030 or 2050 or whatever date some politician chooses at random.
Assuming you mean well, and you’re not trolling, you really haven’t done your research.
1. on any given day, depending on the load in the system, the UK can be running on well over 50% renewables and if the wind stops completely the hydro still keeps the renewables in the mid-20’s.
2. Electric cars reduce exhaust pollution at the point of use to absolutely zero. Yes, they move that pollution elsewhere and that’s the point. The people who are getting sick don’t live next to a power station, they live next to a road. EV’s take away the issues with pollution in the cities where the people live. Even allowing for the fact that the electricity still has to be made from fossil fuel at least some of the time, it’s much easier to control the emissions from one coal, wood or gas burning power station that from several million ICE vehicles.
3. I’m not going to call you a hypocrite because hopefully you do mean well, and you simply don’t do yourself what you’re asking others to do. Your EU5 van is literally killing people. EU6 vehicles actually don’t pollute that much and it’s EU5 that are being banned from cities because they’re literally poisonous. And if you really cared, you’d ditch your fleet of polluters and get one/two clean vehicles that do(es) the same job. Yes, that means spending money, and ultimately that’s what this is about. It’s going to cost quite big money to ditch the polluters. From your post you want others to do it, but you don’t want to do it yourself. This, and the fact that don’t actually appear to know what you’re talking about, massively reduces your credibility in this area.
