You see it regularly with EVs: the national grid will blow up, they’ll conk out on you, you won’t be able to drive to see Granny in Scotland at a moment’s notice, they'll catch fire, they’ll collapse car parks under their extra weight…
Public perception of electric cars has become particularly topical this week following the fire in a Luton Airport multi-storey car park. It started when a single car caught fire and the Twitter police had already decided it was an EV, as they seemingly catch fire more. That it proved to be a diesel car was moot - the news agenda had moved on and mud sticks.
Seeing the reaction brought the words of Mike Hawes, SMMT boss into view, who said “we must add carrots to the sticks” to incentivise the switch to EVs. At the moment, a wider interpretation of government messaging around a switch to EVs is that people needn’t bother for another five years, yet the reality, of course, is that with the ZEV mandate car makers need car buyers to buy EVs - and fast.
Hawes says buyers will need encouragement to do so, but at the moment none is forthcoming and the reputational damage EVs are suffering with stories like the Luton fire, and no fightback or counter campaign forthcoming from legislators, that job is getting harder on a daily basis. For private buyers EVs remain a more expensive purchase, and in a cost-of-living crisis they’ll need convincing otherwise. Stories like the Luton saga will not make this any easier.
Another industry trend highlights the importance of identifying disinformation: the rise of Chinese cars on our roads. We’ve had media reports already this year of these cars spying on their British drivers, and even how the Chinese state can take control of them remotely and put the brakes on. Quite why they’d do either of these I don’t know, but articles like this will have been the only exposure many casual observers have had to Chinese cars.
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