You may have heard in the news recently, that the UK Government have decided to ban all petrol and diesel cars from 2040 onward.
That’s right. From 2040 onward, the only type of car that will be on sale is the type of car that needs to be plugged in.
Now, whilst this is the right type of thinking – we need to be more efficient and we do need to think of the environment and the amount of emissions being spat out by the diesel and petrol cars today, I do have a few concerns…
Firstly, isn’t 2040 real soon? – I mean, it’s not that far away for us all to be ready – and have a different mindset.
To this point, we’d all need charging points at home, work and in the street – obviously, anywhere – where we park out car. This is so we’ve also got ‘electricity’ available to charge the car. Hope someone could work on wireless charging…
Then, what happens to the petrol stations? – thing of the past? – correct.
Well… kind of. Shell announced that they were going to start immediately to add ‘charging’ points to their stations now, and start to be prepared for 2040. They’re going to enhance their stations, so it’s more of an experience. you plug you car in, come into the store, sit down – have a coffee and let your car charge. They’ll be ‘fast charging’ points as well.
Now, whilst this is great thinking, personally, i’d like to use my time a little more efficiently – i’m guessing grocery stores will have charging points – so I can shop and let my car charge.
Yes, you’re right – I do have my groceries delivered, which means, I won’t even need to charge my car whilst shopping. Just at home.
But what about those long trips? – ah.. yes. We’ll need various charging stations en route, and yes, we’ll need to stop and have a coffee. But, by then – could we have a longer range battery?
Secondly… (I know, I mentioned quite a few points in the first point), cost of the batteries and disposal of them.
It’s not like we have AA batteries that go in, and when they run out we put some new ones in. Batteries can cost a lot of money. They’re not cheap. Will we by 2040 have ‘cheaper batteries’? I would love to know what the plan there is.
I’ve doing my research… I know Panasonic are building a large factory where they’ll be producing a lot.. and I mean a lot, of batteries. They’ll main be partnering up with Tesla. Who are obviously, leading the way with electric cars.
BMW have also announced, that they’ll have more electric cars in their range, sooner, rather than later. They’ll be releasing 2 new fully electric cars in 2020. Guess what… Mercedes area working on something similar with a time frame of 2025…
Looks like – everyone is gearing up for 2040 and steering in the right direction.
I personally think, we need to a) give more thought to the infrastructure and ensure we have enough ‘support’ for electric vehicles such as charging points, long range batteries, etc… b) understand how the oil companies will react… they can’t be all sitting there thinking, ah.. everything will be fine. Remember, they employ a vast number of people… will they start building ‘battery factories’?