I've
never been very car proud – a good thing really because for most of
my life I couldn't afford to be. Having to do my car shopping at the
cheap end of the market brought me, though, some cars which I
remember with affection. Like the two elderly Cortinas, one a
Crusader model and one a 2litre Ghia – with real wood trim inside
and two carburettors! A couple of times I bought cars from a friend
who was good at doing them up: a Morris Marina Estate was one and the
other was a huge, square, Austin Maxi. Both gave excellent service
when we were raising a family and needed to ferry kids and kit
around. A nippy little VW Polo cost me a hundred pounds
when I bought it with 125,000 miles on the clock. It was fun to drive
and served me well for a couple of years.
Nowadays
I can afford to be a bit more choosy. As you might expect, I'm not
tempted by the Jaguar end of the spectrum like many men of a certain
age. In fact I'm bored by car-buying and have boiled it down to a
very simple process. Having decided what I want – model, year,
price etc - I look for it on the internet and when I find it I go and
buy it. In
Iceland I drive Skoda Octavias and have come to love them; my own car
in England reflects this. There an Octavia is too big for my needs so
I've been driving a 2006 Fabia for the last four years.
With
my concern about carbon emmissions, a major criterion with me for
choosing a car is fuel economy. Most of my mileage is made up of
quite long trips, upwards of 100 miles. My 1.4litre diesel Fabia will
get me 70mpg on these journeys. And yes – that's my calculation,
not one generated by VW's bent software. (Just in case you didn't
know, Skodas have VW engines.) How different from my old cars. I was
lucky to get the miles per gallon out of the teens with them. I once
heard someone say that the Cortina carburettor was a device for
setting fire to liquid petrol.
Although
better off now than I used to be, I'm never going to be able to be an
early-uptaker when new car innovations come along. For the first time
ever I feel a bit sad about this. I think electric cars are finally
on the way. The new generation, powered by lithium ion batteries,
perform well, have a realistically long travel distance per charge,
and a realistically short charging time.
My
lottery win car would be the latest electric Tesla.
This is a high end, high performance luxury car with a price tag to
match. It's not just a fast car with a long range and a short
charging time - I think it has a bigger brain than I have. It has
auto parking, energy reclaiming brakes and self-updating autopilot.
Like any new product, it now needs the rich early uptakers to come in
and buy it so that the manufacturer can invest in the next level of
production, bringing in economies of scale and further research to
bring prices down to a more everyday level.
Electric
cars have for years been hyped as pollution free. But of course they
aren't. It's just sloppy terminology – the sort of thing that means
having to go into yet another tedious explanation when the pub
blowhard hangs another one-line 'clincher' on you.
There
are two sorts of pollution here. First, the one referred to by the
over enthusiastic electric car promoters, is localised air pollution.
In vehicle-filled urban environments we are inhaling the exhausts of
all those internal combustion units around us: sulphur,
carbon monoxide, particulates. It's not good for us. It's possible to
reduce your exposure to this stuff by going a long way away from town
to where there is less traffic, and so beyond the cloud of muck.
The
second is atmospheric pollution, mainly CO2 emissions. As it
affects the world's atmosphere and climate, there is no getting away
from it. If
cars are using electricity generated by a distant power station, the
pollution is created there, but as it is the second sort, it has
world wide consequences. Meantime in the city where the driving is
done, there is no longer any localised, type 1, pollution because the
exhausts are gone.
If
by some magic all
our electricity suddenly came from wind or wave or whatever then we'd
have no local pollution in the city and no environmental pollution at
the point of generation. But most of our electricity is still
generated by mucky stuff, including coal. So, by driving an electric
car are you saving your own urban neck in the short term but pushing
out even nastier pollutants elsewhere which will have long term
consequences for us all? Interestingly, I've just come across this in
the journal of the Centre for Alternative Technology, which is
relevant:
'Production
of grid electricity with
today's mix of generation
equates
to around 60 grams per kilometre of CO2 emissions [if used to charge
an electric car]. In contrast there are around 230 grams per
kilometre of CO2 emitted in total from ICE [internal combustion
engine] cars from the extraction, transportation, production, storage
and use of the fuel. That is a reduction in CO2 emissions of nearly
four times even when the electricity comes from the grid.' (Paul
Martin, Has the Time of Electric Cars
Arrived?,
in Clean Slate, no. 99, Spring 2016.)
I
squirm a bit at quoting this, because Mr Martin gives
no sources for his figures. Clean Slate is a respectable journal, but
I feel very uncomfortable about using this kind of stuff in an
argument without being able to answer the question 'Who sez?!' So, as
one who has ranted about unsubstantiated claims in earlier blogs, I
have to say it's really something I hope is true rather than
something I assert is true. Only two cheers for Mr Martin then. (But see the 2019 update below.) Whether or not he's right, it remains important to continue with eliminating polluting methods of generation: 60gm per kg of driving is not good - it's just less bad than 230gm.
The
thrust of many environmental arguments, though, has been that the
proliferation of car use causes more than just pollution. There's the
consumption of materials and energy in their manufacture, congestion
in towns, noise, and the covering of the countryside with road
surfaces for instance. For these reasons, some say, we should be
using public transport instead, where space and resources are used
more intensively and therefore more economically.
It's
a tough sell. If we replace the word, 'car', with the phrase,
'independent personal transport', we can see why. Public transport
can never be as convenient as the car in your drive which will take
you and your luggage to that secluded holiday cottage or your
parents' home late on a Friday night after work. There's the current
culture too, where people express themselves through their cars (I
don't), and one doesn't personally own public transport. Personal
independent transport is too powerfully attractive ever to be
willingly let go by many. Maybe the future will lie in a combination
of low-impact, long lasting private vehicles with public transport
for use in urban areas and for long distance travel.
As a
non-car-proud person I like the sharing and hire schemes which exist
in many cities already. (https://www.car2go.com/US/en/#81296I for instance) I like this
idea because it uses cars more intensively, thereby reducing the
number and getting rid of the ' it's standing there, it's paid for,
so I might as well use it', aspect of motoring, which sees us using
car and fuel for unnecessary purposes. Also good is that I can choose
a car fit for current purpose, say a pickup for a working trip, a
people carrier for a family outing or a Smart car for local stuff -
and there would be many non-motoring, public transport, days which
would not leave me thinking I'm paying again for travel I've already
paid for through my car expenses.
Maybe
this is the crux of the matter. It seems there are many ways of
getting oneself around but the car is the one which can be used to
express ourselves, indicate status or give us pride of ownership. To
the extent that I feel any of these needs, they are not served by car
ownership (except, as a history buff, I'd enjoy having an old vintage
job I could polish and look at once in a while without going far in it). But I accept that for many they are.
But cultures can change: already those of us who live in cities with pedestrianised centres use rapid tram and bus services locally and most of us find public transport - planes and trains - more convenient than cars for very long journeys. And let's not forget bikes - very fashionable as I write: now there's an alternative that also provides a cool way of expressing yourself.
As a footpath builder I know that the best way of keeping people away from where you don't want them to walk is to make it very nice for them to walk where you do want them to go. So just maybe, as public transport, hire schemes and cycle routes improve, making it ever easier and more comfortable for us to move ourselves and our stuff about, more and more people will feel they can get through life without owning a car.
_____
Update May 2019:
Data which confirms Mr Martin's analysis can be seen here:
https://whysgetsserious.blogspot.com/2019/03/about-environment-one-liners-again.html
