Whilst electrically powered cars are in their infancy, the concept has been given a boost in London with the launch of the first electric vehicle re-charge zone.
Ten boroughs in London that form the South and West London Transport Conference Partnership (SWELTRAC) are installing re-charging posts allowing drivers to plug in and charge their cars at a number of locations.
Nine of the sites are up and running in car parks in Richmond upon Thames, Hammersmith and Fulham, Sutton and Wandsworth, with plans for more to follow in the area.
Drivers will need to register to use the scheme and will pay an annual administration fee of £100 and whilst their car is being re-charged, they will also have to pay normal parking fee’s as well, but other than that, its just charge & go.
Richmond Council are on a drive to reduce emissions and hope these charging points will encourage people to switch to electrically powered vehicles, which they describe as “environmentally friendly travel”. The long term goal is that with electronic motor technology improving, that drivers will see electrically powered cars as a way to save money and reduce any impact on the environment.
At this time, however, the range on these cars is so short and performance so poor, that they don’t even start to offer any kind of viable alternative to a normal car, except for maybe use as a town car, or car for short hops. You can’t just jump in and drive from London to Scotland so even if you buy yourself an electric car, for where it fits your lifestyle, for more normal journeys, you are going to need a second car, or you could of course take another mortgage out and go by train or some other form of public transport.
Nobody wants to prevent progress, but we are all in danger here of wasting huge amounts of money (probably funded by the taxpayer) to focus on short term options, that will just never make it as long term fixes or ever be the way forward, just to keep a number of the anti anything people happy.
No one wants to destroy our world environment, but it always seems that its cars and motorists that get it in the neck but fact is that your typical return holiday flight to Florida will chuck more pollution “per passenger” into the air than each of us would use for heating, lighting, local transport etc in more than one year and yet this does not to seem to prevent us all going to Disney Land.
Cars are good things, for many of us, they are absolutely essential. Cars enable us to get around easily, visit our friends, get to work, explore our country and they continue to give us an independence that everyone seems hell bent on trying to take away from us and for many of us, our car is something we are passionate about and proud of, it’s something we love, but more importantly, its something we need.
The motor industry and everything that feeds it is a massive employer of people, ranging from the companies that make the cars and sells them, the garages that repair it, the body shops that straighten it up after a bump (and the insurers that insure it), right through to the people who make the parts & sell them and the tyre companies that put the rubber on and of course, the fuel stations where you fill up.
All in all, most of us in some way have benefited from the motor industry and certainly our economy has and a modern car is pretty good at doing what it’s there for, and whilst there will at some point be a technology that will replace what we use now, we are kidding ourselves if we think its just around the corner. The car makers have worked so hard to reduce the impact by reducing CO2 and are doing a stunning job and should be commended (see DFT extract below), but what I would advise everyone who enjoys their car and the freedom it offers is to make the best of it whilst you can, as it seems the lunatics are now in charge of the asylum and you will look back and think of these as the halcyon days.
The following is an extract from a report by The Department of Transport,(CM 6234). “New vehicles are much cleaner than those of a decade or so ago. A new car today produces 20 times less emissions than an equivalent vehicle in the mid-1980s. Over the last decade emissions of the worst pollutants – oxides of nitrogen and particles – from road transport have fallen by 50 per cent despite traffic growth. Our projections suggest that this trend will continue”