In the never ending pursuit of personal development I thought I’d tear myself away from the Daily Mail and go upmarket with the Telegraph 's latest swivel-eyed take in the EV debate. Thank God I take the Grauniad, along with the rest of the Metropolitan Elite and the Cabinet.
"Volkswagen is so concerned about flagging sales that it has taken the extraordinary decision of halting electric vehicle production at one of its biggest plants. Assembly lines for electric models will be paused for six weeks at the Emden factory in northwest Germany and 300 of its 1,500 staff laid off after sales fell 30pc short of forecasts.
This means production of the new VW ID.7 electric model, which had been due to commence in July will be pushed back until the end of the year. The ID.4 electric SUV and the upcoming ID.7 electric sedan will also be delayed.
“We are experiencing strong customer reluctance in the electric vehicle sector,” plant boss Manfred Wulff said.
That is remarkably plain language from the largest car manufacturer on the planet, and a company that recently announced plans to invest €120bn (£103bn) over the next five years in “electrification and digitalisation”.
It comes months after Ford poured cold water on the shift to electric with thousands of job losses in Europe. Electric vehicle production is unable to support anything like the same number of jobs that petrol and diesel models are able to sustain, it said. Boss Jim Farley estimates that 40pc fewer staff will be needed to develop battery versions.
It’s industrial self-sabotage and a commercial, economic and social catastrophe in the making. But what’s worse is that the damage risks being far greater in the UK than anywhere else in the Western world thanks to the Government’s myopic obsession with arbitrary net zero targets.
While the rest of the industrial world seems to have largely settled on a 2035 deadline for petrol and diesel phase out, ministers, for reasons destined to remain a mystery, have decided Britain needs to hit this milestone five years earlier than everyone else.
It makes no sense at all, and yet the ramifications threaten to be huge. By diverting capital into something that lots of people essentially don’t want, it risks inflicting massive losses on an already fragile UK car industry.
It is pure fantasy to imagine that Britain – with a dearth of battery factories (consultants Alix Partners estimates as much as a third of Britain’s battery requirements will need to be imported), a paucity of chargers and dramatically higher energy costs – will be in any position to go fully electric in the next seven years. And the Government simply isn’t capable of solving any of these challenges in time, if at all.
The UK risks becoming the unfortunate guinea pig in a costly and dangerous experiment that persuades the rest of the world to push their own deadlines out even further, turning this country into an example of how not to become a nation of electric car owners.
Perhaps, instead of everyone rushing out to buy an electric car as the end of the decade nears, millions of people will simply hand over the keys to their obsolete petrol bangers, and choose to walk everywhere instead.
It would have the double benefit of being a spectacular protest move, at the same time as being entirely in keeping with net zero – great for the environment but terrible for the economy"
What drivel!
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