Cars and climate change

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Back in December 2008, we had a report from the UK Government's 'Commission on Climate Change'. The Chairman confidently predicted that by 2020, 40% of all new cars sold would be electric or hybrid. Now given that we buy around 2+ million cars a year in the UK (recessions apart), that's over 800,000 sets of wheels. And it won't be just one model either , it will have to be loads.

Well the last time I checked, which is years ago, your average new car cost around $2 billion to develop and that was using the same engine and gear box. Change them and you can double the figure. DEW98, the Scorpio successor had its development stopped when Ford realised that it was going to cost $8 billion.

Given that so many of the world's carmakers are either profitless or near bankrupt, it ain't on is it?

Last week the Boston Consulting Group produced a report that looked at the supporting infrastructure for electric and hybrid cars. They reckoned that in Europe alone, we'd need $21 billion alone to set up battery charging facilities in Europe in 2020 + another $49 billion more to develop the technology.

In the wake of the banking crisis, these numbers don't look so bad but they ignore the people and ancilliary element. Where are the engineers coming from? Who will make the batteries and where will the raw materials come from? And who wants a bloody car with a range of no more than 200 miles?

And for what? It was not so long ago that Tony Blair stated that if Britain shut up shop tomorrow, it would take the Chinese no more than two years to replace our CO2 output. And the cows will continue farting methane and you can see what that gas does if you go back to my notes on the Permian extinction.

I don't know the answer but then neither will I be around to see it.