I, like 17% of the UK population (approx. 10 million) live in rural areas. I'm six miles from the nearest supermarket and shops and public transport is non-existent. (Once a day type of thing). Prior to lockdown and wfh I was commuting 200 miles a week in a 18 year old Diesel that I bought for £500.I couldn't cycle (too dangerous), walk (too far) or bus (no bus).
Round here many people drive Diesels for their economy (11% extra energy per gallon compared to Petrol) though currently with the Diesel price premium over Petrol being roughly 11% more that's no longer true but diesel engines do last longer.
I'm not opposed to EVs but I don't think there'll be cheap ones like my Diesel if ever or at least for a long long time. And no one has said about future taxes on EVs. All that ICE fuel tax revenue will have to be replaced as it dwindles away. The 800 LB Gorilla in the room that no one mentions is "pay as you drive" I suspect.
Just because the technology doesn't work for 17% of people right now, doesn't mean we can't make an improvement for the other 83%. An anecdote, but I live in a city centre, quite close to a primary school. There are multiple range rovers parked outside in the mornings and afternoons. Living in edinburgh, your primary school is assigned based on your post code, so these kids are being driven less than a mile to school in 2L SUVs, in an area where the roads are gritted, and it's snowed a handful of times in the 7 years I've lived here. From speaking to my neighbors, most of the trips my neighbors make are less than 10 miles, and even at that, it's only an occasional 30-40 mile trip to one of the nearer seaside areas. _all_ of these trips are feasible with an EV.
> but diesel engines do last longer.
"Longer" kind of doesn't matter these days. Sure, a diesel engine will literally never die, however my first car was a 1.4L peugeot with 260,000 miles on it. The engine and chassis were the only parts that hadn't been replaced by the time I got it, which is 25 years of your current mileage.
> I'm not opposed to EVs but I don't think there'll be cheap ones like my Diesel if ever or at least for a long long time.
A person commuting 200 miles per week, driving an old, heavily polluting car is likely to be one of the most affected by these changes. People with your driving habits are the reason that regulations like this have to exist in these forms. Poeple will hyper=optimise for their own benefit, as all of the externalities aren't costed. At the very least, buy a post-2008 diesel with a DPF in it.
True. I checked a better route planner, a great app to plan electric vehicles trips, and driving from Brighton to Glasgow today in 2020 is 7h10m of driving and 36m of charging with a tesla model 3. Let's round up to 1h of charging. I don't think it is a problem today, and even less in 10 years with better cars and a bigger charging network. Sure you may lose some time because you will have slightly longer breaks, but it's fine in my opinion and don't forget that electricity is cheaper than gaz (unless you charge to 100% on Ionity without using a car from a Ionity constructor).
Uncontrolled mass migration (Thanks Tony Blair) under New Labour added five million people over a ten year period. Guess what, many drive cars. So yes, it has affected transport.
When I see people blame more drivers for traffic, the only culprit I can see is a failure to extend public transit accordingly. A huge number of people drive in New York, for example, for lack of a better alternative, not because driving is more convenient, cheaper, or in any other way better for them. Blaming car traffic on the number of people in a densely populated area is futile, and any place that has grown reasonably with its population has also abandoned the notion that cars should be the default mode of transportation.