To go or not to go.

When I was in my first year at University I used to have debates with my parents about the harm made by internal combustion engines. Their reply was that if I did not approve of cars why do I ride in them? The answer was of course that at that time there was no alternative; unless you lived in cities. In London I rode my bicycle with a sign on the back saying ‘no noise, no fumes’ for a decade.

Fifty years later I have won my argument. London has introduced ‘low emission zones’ having recognised that the air pollution from vehicles is harmful to the health of it’s inhabitants.

When I retired in Spain I bought a Spanish made electric bicycle. At first it was great but after five years the battery had lost so much of it’s capacity to fully charge that I had to buy a new one. This cost me about a third of what I had paid for the bicycle. Then the computer had a problem and no e-bike specialist knew how to fix it and the BH factory was closed because of the pandemic. When the motor broke I took my bike down to the recycling centre and said goodbye to it. Never has a bicycle caused me so many problems.

Interestingly, many e-car owners are going through the same experience, only worse. They have invested considerably more money in an e-car than the cost of a bicycle and their anxieties must be proportionately larger.

I will not list all the of the problems they face but here are a few;

*Recharging the batteries; those without a private drive will find it hard or impossible to charge in the street. Already pavements in cities have electric cables running across the pavement from homes to e-cars overnight.

*Recharging is expensive; unless you are recharging at home using your own photo voltaic panels, you will pay for your electricity.

*Mains electricity at home is not green electricity. In Spain mine is mainly produced by nuclear and gas fired power stations. Only 5% of my electricity is from renewable sources.

*Electricity sent to users via a national grid is highly inefficient, losing about 80% of the energy from the original source. Local power production will one day replace this but not yet.

*Electric cars are cheaper to maintain than internal combustion cars but there is not yet the infrastructure and technicians in place to repair broken e-cars.

*Electric cars are heavy and need expensive tyres.

*Electric car tyres put out more particulate matter into the air than diesel cars produce from their exhaust.

*Electric cars are heavy and some multi-storey car parks and car ferries may have to be redesigned.

*Lythium ion batteries have a risk of spontaneously combusting.

*Drivers of electric cars experience ‘distance anxiety’. For longer trips they will have to stop and find a charging point. While these are being increased in number, there is no strategic control over the number of these points and customer demand. Waiting for a recharge is not satisfactory for people in a hurry.

*If there is a traffic jam for any reason, e-car users could find themselves running out of electricity and being powerless (literally) to do anything about it. Apart from planned road closures and random accidents, extreme weather such as freezing blizzards can stop the traffic and cause deaths. Keeping the lights and heater on is not an option for e-car users.

*As one third of a cars energy consumption in it’s lifetime is consumed in it’s production. It makes sense therefore to make cars that last a long time. A diesel engine can do a million miles as often London taxis do before some are sent off to California for an overhaul and new life. The lifetime of new e-cars is unknown but certainly the batteries will the first to be replaced and that raises the question of where new rare earth materials are going to ethically sourced from…the moon?

At present, many e-car users are in the ‘honey-moon’ phase of ownership but already some are questioning whether their choice was really such a good one.

Car producers are also going through the same questioning process. Major companies such as Ford, General Motors, Apple and Volkswagen are applying the brakes.

It is without question that personal transport (outside of cities) is not going to go away. We love our cars and the convenience, privacy and comfort they provide. With the approach of the era of the self drive cars, users will be able to sit back and enjoy the ride…until a pesky teenager deliberately steps out in front of the car (just for a laugh) and forces an emergency stop…or a car jacker on a lonely road at night! Making moral decisions based on appearance of those stopping cars, is still over the horizon for AI. Does it recognise a police officer in uniform?

And then if you are used to driving over the speed limit (as most drivers are except when they approach a clearly signed speed enforcement camera) then you will find your journey times extended as your AI dutifully follows the traffic laws.

In the meantime drivers are left with the internal combustion engine. There are stories of some drivers who bought e-cars dusting off their old diesels and selling the Tesla.

Toyota appear to be the most ‘customer need’ focused car production company and have asked themselves the question; ‘how can we make the internal combustion engine green?’

One answer is to use hydrogen as a combustible gas using electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. I remember watching this being done on a science television programme back in the 1970’s and thinking then – ‘that is the future’. I was not wrong.

There are nuances regarding how ‘green’ hydrogen production is and the infographic below describes this.

There is another alternative fuel which is ammonia. This is a main component of many fertilisers and is a chemical made of hydrogen and nitrogen (NH3). It can be burnt in a combustion engine as a zero carbon fuel.

This essay has focused on electric cars but clearly heavy transport by train, ship and goods vehicles are substantial polluters are the moment. Hydrogen has always been a preferred route for the development of engines of the future for moving heavy goods around the world.

Science tends to have a momentum of it’s own. New inventions often take the lead in how society uses them and evolves. This new ‘green transport’ debate, raises the questions of how much the government provides subsidies for new enterprises and how important planet sustainability is believed to be by various governments around the world.

If these decisions are devolved to industry leaders it is likely that little will be done as we have observed over the last five decades or so, when ‘global warming’ was first highlighted as an issue. Politicians such as Margaret Thatcher took a very forward looking view as to the health of the planet and the effect of unrestrained industrial production and consumption. Private enterprise so far has followed the policy of ripping the planet apart. Only now is this policy biting back.

Perhaps today, it is down to the individual to vote with their feet. Move into a city, use public transport or a bicycle. Or move to the countryside and fit photo voltaic cells and solar water heaters to your house. Or just do nothing.

It depends how important breathing is to you.