Steve Baker is one of the small number of free-thinking members of the UK parliament. His latest post, on the House of Commons Transport Committee's hearing on electric vehicles is a must-read.
The Transport Committee met today for an evidence session on low carbon vehicles. It illustrated that crony capitalism is now not merely entrenched and passed over, but borne out of the good intentions of a global regulatory elite.
In the first session, we learned that “consumer demand is lagging policy”, which I translated as “people don’t want to buy these expensive vehicles” (I’ll link to the transcript later). We learned that electric vehicles are expensive and impractical: £30,000 for a subsidised car with a £15,000 battery and a short range. Of course the electricity comes mostly from carbon sources, although in the end we were asked to believe that combustion-kinetic energy-electricity-transmission-charging-discharging-kinetic energy is a more efficient process than combustion-kinetic energy. Perhaps.