The Telegraph has published a piece by Ross Clark that finally admits that there IS a war on the car being waged, but doesn't say who's behind it.
Clark writes:
'First the good news: car sales are looking quite perky, in spite of the cost of living crisis. In the first four months of the year 627,250 new cars rolled off the forecourt. Over the same period in 2022 it was 536,727. But now the bad news, at least for the government: sales of electric cars are running out of juice.'
'The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has downgraded its sales forecast for electric vehicles. It now expects 18.4 per cent of total sales to be pure electric cars, rather than 19.7 percent as previously forecast. And in my view, even this new projection looks optimistic. So far this year only 15.4 percent of sales fell into this category, a smidgeon up from 14.4 percent in the same period last year.'
'Still the most popular by far are the pure petrol models. The stalling appeal of electric cars is a serious problem for the industry because, from next year, manufacturers will be obliged to ensure that at least 22 percent of their car sales have zero tailpipe emissions. Incidentally, don’t fall for the “zero emission” description; there are still plenty of carbon emissions in their manufacture and in generating the electricity to power them, while their brakes and tyres are responsible for particulate pollution.'
'But what are manufacturers supposed to do if the public simply doesn’t want to buy enough of their vehicles to reach the threshold – which is set to rise every year between now and the start of the proposed ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles in 2030? They may have to stop us buying the cars we want to buy, or find themselves in breach of the law. This could mean that an awful lot of motorists are going to be priced off the road, because they simply can’t afford to buy an electric car.'
'It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Two years ago Bloomberg hubristically predicted that prices of electric cars would be on a parity with petrol cars by 2024. Then came the big surge in commodity prices, pushing up the cost of the large quantities of cobalt, lithium, nickel and other metals required to manufacture electric vehicle batteries. In spite of a few price cuts by Tesla, the price of a new electric car remains rather higher than its petrol equivalent.'
'Advocates say you will save in the long run through lower running costs. I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Thanks to the surge in electricity prices over the past year it can in some cases cost more to run an electric car than a petrol or diesel one. But all the comparison figures are spurious in any case, because they compare the cost of petrol – around half of which is tax – with the price of electricity, which, if you draw it from your domestic supply, is only 5 per cent VAT. Is the government really going to sit around and watch as £24 billion a year revenue from fuel duty evaporates? Is it heck. It is going to hammer motorists with new taxes, most likely road pricing.'
'Sooner or later it is going to dawn on the government that electric cars are not a technological miracle which will magically make life cheaper and better for all of us. If they are to be forced on the population, it could well mean a great number of ordinary motorists being priced off the road. If the government is happy about that, I am pretty sure that large numbers of voters are not going to be.'
No mention of who is waging the war, or why they are waging it. No mention of the series of World Health Organisation targets for climate change, air pollution, and cyclist safety that have given governments and local councils the perfect excuse to wage this war on the motorist. No mention of the World Economic Forum (a Marxist organisation) pushing the same agenda. No mention of the fact that all of the traffic calming, pollution reducing, planet-saving schemes currently being implemented are by Labour councils, and do not have a single piece of evidence for any of it. Or the fact that a war on the car is nothing new. This is, in fact, just a rehash of the Communists hatred for personal freedom, and individual autonomy.
This is an ideological war being waged by Marxists and until we call it what it is we are never going to win.
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