Readers say no to electric vehicles

A recent article in Euro Weekly News concerning the pros and cons of electric vehicles received a significant number of comments from readers.

Of those who responded just 5 per cent said that they either owned or intended to purchase an all-electric vehicle however those who had one were very happy with them.

Would you buy an electric car?

A further 5 per cent supported the idea of owning a hybrid vehicle (combining a petrol/diesel engine with a smaller electric battery), about 2 per cent  flirted with the idea of buying hydrogen powered car in the future and one reader said that he would stick to his horse!

The overwhelming number of readers from across Europe (as there are many who use English as their ‘Lingua Franca’), some 88 per cent, were opposed, some vehemently, to the thought of buying electric.

Overall, they considered electric cars expensive to buy, having short ranges, run the risk of catching fire and the whole concept is not green due to the environmental damage done when creating the batteries themselves.

See what readers say

Sebastian Savage said “Can you imagine the Iberdrola meltdown if even 20 per cent of us wanted a 20kW charger at home – they can’t even supply 3.3 reliability?”

Sitting on the fence was Brian Cuthell who could be swayed if the price was right, “Might get one for £8,000 it was on the news last night, they have taken over from Tesla as the best sellers in China.”

There was a long and considered comment from Ian Carrington but in summary he said “They cost too much, they suffer catastrophic depreciation, insurance costs are high and likely to rise whilst charging at public fast chargers costs more than buying diesel.”

“Charging at home is cheaper of course but where do people without off road parking charge and don’t even think about towing a caravan unless you want to recharge every hundred miles or less.”

“In the last couple of years two car carrying ships and a car park at Luton Airport have been destroyed by burning battery cars. The normal method of controlling a fire in ships is to flood the deck with oxygen free gas but this does not work with this type of fire.”

Are electric cars prone to catching fire?

To counter this, Stephen Cosgrove who is thinking about electric observed “Survey found there was a 0.0012 per cent chance of a passenger electric vehicle battery catching fire, compared with a considerably higher 0.1 per cent chance for internal combustion engine cars.

“There was a rush to blame electric for the Luton airport car park fire but it was simply not true and the fire brigade confirmed the source of the fire was a combustion engine vehicle.”

Jokingly Nigel Adams commented “Dinosaur juice all the way.”

Of those responding 67 per cent were male and 33 per cent were female, of whom just one championed the hybrid and none all electric with Lana Bitumen reasoning “No chance for an electric one here in the mountains.  First I would have to build a charging station on solar panels for myself. Then it’s too heavy to climb up the bad caminos.”

Is it time for a change of direction?

The European motoring lobby is enormously wealthy and it may be that the time has come for manufacturers to question the need to introduce electric cars quite so early and no doubt they would receive support from the oil companies.