The true cost of EV motoring

Any motoring journalist will be thoroughly fed up with the now daily barrage of electric car hyperbole of brain-frazzling irrelevance. Using a long stick to sort through this morning’s detritus revealed: ‘the most searched for electric car on Tik Tok; ‘a drag queen, Love Islander and YouTuber to encourage a new generation of electric car racing fans’; and ‘70 per cent of European motorists would consider an electric vehicle for their next car’, which was a 7000-strong survey drawing conclusions for 743 million Europeans and 280 million vehicles spread across the 2200 miles between Narva in Estonia to Galway in Ireland.

Incredible? Yes, I thought so, too, and binned the lot.

Battery cars are a shouty business at present: the public with understandable concerns about high prices, limited range, restricted battery life and patchy recharging coverage; the motor industry squawking about profitability, cost per kilowatt hour and energy density; the get-rich-quick recharging companies jostling to sell the public branded recharging volts; and the Government trilling its messianic ‘battery-car’ message without considering some of the no less ecological alternatives.