I DON’T know if you’ve noticed this but there are quite a lot of electric cars silently gliding by out there.
Cheap to run, nice to own and of course yadada saving the planet, okay not really saving the planet.
But definitely saving money and definitely not churning out the levels of cancer-causing diesel fumes that now pollute our cities.
A particulate epidemic caused by our own Government who completely forgot the cancer causing stuff when cutting diesel fuel duty and starting the bonanza and have now, er, have suddenly remembered it. The cancer. And are therefore about to outlaw the very diesel vehicles they encouraged in the first place. Or certainly tax them to the hilt. Paving the way presumably for more electric cars, which they are now surely bending over backwards to encourage.
Hurrah. I say this because I have one of those electric cars. But then you are talking to a man who became a newspaper reporter about five minutes before the whole print industry hit the internet iceberg. Who then became a criminal defence lawyer only to discover that pay rates hadn’t risen in decades and the amount of effectively unpaid work involved increases exponentially.
A man who took delivery of his little battery powered car about two weeks after Glasgow City Council introduced pay meters for those electric parking bays that for years had been completely free. Umm.
If you have an electric car you will know this latter point is actually not a bad thing. Some of those electric cars that were sitting on meters all day for absolutely nothing actually weren’t very electric at all.
Powered by a fat big fat greedy petrol motor with only a tiny little battery that could push the car 20 miles or so on a good day. And there weren’t many good days.
There was even apparently meter sparks flying between the truly battery car powered owners and the Philfy PHEVs as they are known. Polite notes on windscreens along the lines of: “You selfish meter hog, you can drive home on a petrol engine. If I don’t get a charge I am stuck.”
If you look about now the charging meters are all pretty much as deserted as they were when clean motoring was just a dream. I can live with that. I can even live with the rise in the cost of home electricity that makes charging one of these little blighters a tad pricier. The increase in taxation through benefit in kind too? Yes, that’s not good.
There is still though the completely free road tax? Isn’t there? Er. No. Apparently that’s ending too. This year. Anyone remember that famous Volkswagen advert? At least I didn’t actually buy the thing outright.
A car dealer I know told me they lose a staggering amount of their value in a very short time. Something to do with battery guarantees and risk. So when the lease is up will I be chucking it back? The Government now seeing electric cars as just another fat revenue target. Probably not. It’s very nice to drive. I may even get one cheap.
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