Electric cars

The case for driverless cars

I can’t remember the name of the comedian, but he had a wonderful ambition, one which will sadly now never be realised. He wanted to interview Neil Armstrong for an hour on live television without mentioning the moon landings once. I wish he’d succeeded. In fact Armstrong might have leapt at the opportunity to pontificate about baseball or gardening, rather than the Apollo missions. It must be maddening when every conversation with a stranger turns to one brief event in your life: rather like being in the Eagles and knowing that, in a two-hour concert, 90 per cent of the crowd is only there for ‘Hotel California’. Following in this

HS2 has been a fiasco. It’s time to ditch it for good

In a fantasy world of wise government vision and decision-making, HS2 would have been announced in November 1964, shortly after the Tokyo Olympics. Visitors to those games saw the future in the form of the Tokaido Shinkansen – the first Japanese ‘bullet train’, which raced 320 miles from the capital to Osaka, carrying 1,300 passengers per train and eventually running 360 trains per day, with average delays measured in seconds. But in that era, UK ministers thought only of axeing railways and building motorways. A de novo British high-speed network could not have taken off in the 1970s, when the French were building the first ligne à Grande Vitesse from

Letters: why AI may be a force for good

Parris review Sir: Matthew Parris (‘Coutts, Farage and the trouble with choice’, 29 July) omitted to mention the initial, fundamental and obvious matter of the breach of client confidentiality committed by Dame Alison Rose, who he says should not have resigned. This is surely the gravest offence any bank official – let alone the head of NatWest – can commit. Yet he puts her resignation down to a ‘silly media storm’, which was actually started by the BBC, to whom the client information was given. Further, his article relates mostly to the discretion which institutions such as banks have in choosing who to admit. But this issue wasn’t about a client’s

Why I’m giving electric cars a second chance

In April 2021 I wrote a piece for The Spectator which became the most-read article I have ever had published here. It began with the words: ‘I bought an electric car and wish I hadn’t.’ It was the story of my ill-judged decision to get a Hyundai Kona Electric. I had hoped to use it to virtue-signal, but it turned into the car from hell. Many readers were kind enough to laugh at my self-deprecating jokes. I’ve always had a soft spot for gadgets. When electric cars started to become available in 2018, I ordered the Kona because it seemed to have a reasonable range of around 400km. It was

The trick to driving an electric car in the countryside

As every electric car owner knows, driving an EV over long distances in Britain is not without its obstacles. Everyone has their own tale of getting stranded somewhere unintended after running out of juice. A lack of available chargers can turn even short trips into a logistical nightmare. So how easy is it to run an EV in rural Britain? And should drivers even try? There are at least five electric cars in Kentish village where I live. Three of them belong to neighbours on my street, so I decided to ask them about the pros and pitfalls. Gardener Mark Hughes and his partner Jo bought their ex-demonstrator MG5 estate

Why you no longer need a driveway to go electric

Entrepreneur Jonathan Carrier reckons more people would drive electric cars if they had portable chargers in their boots. The electrical equivalent of a can of petrol. So he’s launching one. Called the ZipCharge Go, he claims it’s a design world first. There are portable battery packs that work with electric cars. Generally, these are designed for giant American recreational vehicles, some of which have their own solar panels, and if you search YouTube you’ll come across allegedly comic videos of people recharging moribund Teslas with petrol generators, but the Go has been designed from the off to charge vehicles, and has the necessary software to pair up with them. ‘The

The electric Mercedes with a range to die for

As a pubescent teenager back in the late 1970s, I was delighted to once find a discarded copy of The Sun newspaper on a tube train, handily folded back to reveal page three. Having admired Miranda from Epping my eyes shifted to the report of a court case in which a retired brigadier had been stopped on the M1 motorway for driving his sporty Rover 3500S at a reckless 102 mph. His defence? That he had been listening to Rossini’s rousing William Tell Overture on the car’s eight-track sound system and become so carried away that he simply kept accelerating – a scenario that was supported by the arresting police

The truth about electric cars

EVs have been easy to poke fun at over the years. Comedian Chris McCausland has a popular stand-up sketch about how Jaguar spent four years developing a space age noise for its electric i-Pace, only to silence it because people were looking skywards when they heard one coming towards them. And yet, despite their futuristic novelty, society has actually adjusted remarkably quickly to the advent of electric cars; they are fast becoming commonplace on British roads. Last year the Government’s EHVS home charging point grant scheme, which ends on 21 March, helped fund almost 61,480 charging units, and last November just under 19 per cent of Britain’s new car market was taken by electric models. These vehicles are no longer

The Audi e-tron GT: stylish enough to tempt Prince William

2030 is the deadline: the end of petrol cars in Britain. Because nothing lasts forever. ‘This may be the last petrol car that I design,’ said a British marque designer, sketching lines on a napkin wistfully. I threw the napkin in a trunk in the attic for memorial. I have become addicted to petrol cars in these last years because they are so conventionally masculine: driving them feels like theft, and it is mind-altering. If you don’t agree, drive an Aston Martin DB11 round a small bend. It will change you. I could write about the unspoken, unconscious joy of polluting – if you trash a planet it won’t forget you

Are electric cars a Columbus’s egg?

The explosion in remote and flexible working accelerated by the pandemic slightly supports my assertion that the most important limits to future innovation may be psychological and behavioural, not technological. I am among a number of people who believe that the newly widespread use of video-conferencing is of great economic significance. A few economists and commentators agree, but all of us suffer mild social embarrassment whenever we make our case: it feels faintly absurd to evangelise a technology which is more than 20 years old, rather than pontificating about the ‘metaverse’ or some other fashionable guff. Yet history bears us out. Because, bizarre as it may seem in retrospect, most

How tech revolutions happen

Trends in New York City tend to foretell trends in London, whose fashions in turn set the pace for smaller British cities. After a summer in the Apple, I can therefore provide British urbanites with a glimpse of their future. I get around on what I newly perceive as a dumpy, sluggish pushbike. Mayor Bill de Blasio has invested extensively in the city’s cycling infrastructure — much to the resentment of motorists, and often for good reason. As London drivers will also attest, removing whole lanes from congested thoroughfares is rarely justified by the modest number of car trips that cyclists obviate. Still, given the soaring popularity of two-wheeled transport,

Dear Mary: Should I pay to charge my electric car at a friend’s house?

Q. An acquaintance suggested organising a celebratory dinner in honour of some mutual friends. He asked my husband and me, along with the other proposed guests, if we would all contribute towards the cost. The evening, in the private room of a top London restaurant, was a huge success and, as agreed, the organiser paid the bill and later sent us all emails with his bank account details to reimburse him. We have now heard that the friends in whose honour the dinner was held are under the impression that the party was paid for solely by the organiser and have been singing his praises ever since. I am not

Why I won’t buy a Tesla

I loved the Ford Mustang Mach-E which I had on loan for four days. It was gorgeous to drive, and slightly saner than the Tesla Model 3 — in that some of the controls involve physical switches and buttons, rather than an on-screen interface. The only annoyance was a persistent whining noise. This came from my teenage daughter who endlessly delivered her strongly held opinion that a fat, 55-year-old advertising man shouldn’t be driving a Mustang. As I patiently explained, when you are a 55-year-old man, you don’t really buy a car for yourself, you buy it for your Jungian shadow-self. So whereas your real-life wife and children might not

Charging ahead: how to get the best out of an electric car

Where do you want to go? China or India? I have always found India infinitely more fascinating — for a simple reason. If you ask Sinophiles about China, they always quote statistics; Indophiles tell you stories. It’s fine to know that China has built 24,000 miles of high-speed rail track, or that its GDP is growing at an annualised rate of 8.27 per cent, but it doesn’t make me want to visit. It’s like reading an article about the film industry in the Economist: informative, yes, but it doesn’t make you want to go to the cinema. The electric car market is trapped in a similar numerical morass. The more

Taking charge: it’s time to buy an electric car

As a wise colleague once said: ‘Yesterday is a great time to buy a computer, because you have already enjoyed it for a day. Alternatively, buy a computer tomorrow. The computer you buy tomorrow will be both faster and cheaper than the computers available now. On no account, however, should you ever buy a computer today.’ One factor delaying our adoption of electric cars is that experience has taught us it pays to wait when buying anything with a plug. There is a huge impetus to buy property because, over time, your options get fewer and dearer. But when contemplating the purchase of an electric car we assume every year

Can the Porsche Taycan convince me to go electric?

How far the world of electric vehicles has come in just a decade. Back in 2011, the most prevalent ‘EV’ to be found on the streets of London was probably a G-Wiz, the Indian-built microcar that was so light, small and slow that it was officially deemed not to be a car at all, but ‘a heavy quadricycle.’ But the 2012 launch of Tesla’s Model S proved that battery power wasn’t just for speed-fearing tree-huggers whose idea of excitement was to potter to the shops at 15mph in what was widely regarded as one of the least attractive automobiles ever made. No – electric cars could be fast, fun, glamorous

What the Formula E ‘catastrophe’ teaches us about electric cars

I didn’t make it down to Valencia, Spain, for the weekend Formula E electric car grand prix. Long trips are more or less out of the question now in my Kona electric car, since Hyundai crippled the range of the battery pack to stop the car from bursting into flames. Not that I missed much. On the first day five teams were disqualified for having consumed too much energy, three cars came to a stop on the track, and others limped to the finish as best they could. Formula E superstar Jean-Éric Vergne completed the last lap at an average speed of just under 20 mph. Slower than my horse.

The car industry is accelerating towards an electric future

Back in November, when Downing Street’s pandemic responses looked daily more incompetent, the announcement of a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, ten years earlier than originally planned, was largely greeted — along with the rest of the ‘Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution’ — as another exercise in Johnsonian distraction and thin-air number-plucking. Auto makers responded defensively, citing the huge costs of re-engineering model ranges in short order and the shameful failure of ministers to encourage investment in plug-in networks for electric vehicles. Meanwhile, Tesla founder Elon Musk announced he would site a battery ‘gigafactory’ in Germany because Brexit made the UK

Letters: Solidarity is the best thing for Scotland

SNP sophistry Sir: Andrew Wilson (‘Scot free’, 21 November) poses the question: ‘What if the case for independence was a highly sophisticated position?’ If only. For the SNP position is one of sophistry rather than sophistication. Wilson states that Scottish voters want Scotland to return to Europe. He also states that an independent Scotland would retain sterling, but does not mention the two policies are incompatible. It would be impossible for an independent Scotland to join the EU using sterling. Wilson declares that staying in the Union is riskier than independence, but we should all reflect on the words of Ronald MacDonald, Adam Smith Professor of Economics at Glasgow University,

Cars weren’t invented for transportation, but conversation

When I first heard Abba’s magnificent 1982 swansong ‘The Day Before You Came’, I’d never come across the Americanised use of the verb ‘make’, meaning ‘reach’. So the line ‘I must have made my desk around a quarter after nine’ baffled me. Given the Swedish obsession with self-assembly furniture, I even wondered whether Björn was using the word conventionally, and Ms Fältskog was in fact kneeling on the floor aligning Tab A with Groove C, while looking for the elusive Allen key with which to attach the castors. On the other hand, if you are British, the lyrics to the Beach Boys’ song ‘Little Deuce Coupe’ are like the poem