26 November (Part 2) - Khanage. He is out to get you
It
was a mistake to try to get ahead of the game by putting Part 1 on line
yesterday. The idea was to take a day off today but at the same time get in
quickly with Dictator Khan’s decision to impose more motoring taxes.
Today The Daily Telegraph reports his comments in more detail. He makes no bones
about his plan to introduce road charging across London. Electric vehicles are to be included.
The people who support his sham air pollution concerns must be mad; mainly if not
entirely Labour or Green so one should not be entirely surprised.
Khan announced some while ago that he would charge electric cars within his existing central London
Congestion Charge Zone In 2025 so no one will escape his obsessive greed. It is
all part of the big plan to drive everyone but cyclists off the road and London
to be Europe’s Karachi.
Speaking of EVs, the ignorance about them is almost laughable. They are not for
everyone and Boris Johnson and however many successors there have been since he
was at No. 10 all aim to make them mandatory by 2030; but there is no way EVs can suit everyone.
Fine for pottering around London and the occasional longer trip but only if you
can charge the thing at home. Otherwise it is too inconvenient and too expensive.
There is no way I would go back to petrol but that is no reason to force
everyone to follow suit but the real facts ought to be out there if potential
buyers are to make the right decision.
Yesterday at around 2:50 p.m. I was listening to Talk Radio which claims to be
the Voice of Common Sense and sometime it is but not in the lead up to three
o’clock. They were discussing electric cars and the station allowed some buffoon to put
forward the following scenario.
In the new age of electric motoring a sudden two feet of snow falls on a
motorway bringing all traffic to a halt. All the batteries would be flat within
[quote] 30 minutes and everyone would freeze to death.
Polluting cars never run out of petrol of course and Ian Collins, the sometimes
not very bright Talk Radio presenter agreed with him.
The caller warmed to his theme. Next day there would be a thaw and with thousands of
cars occupied by dead and dying drivers it would take weeks to clear the road.
It prompted me to go to my car this morning and look at the data for when it is
put into Utility Mode which is intended to be used when only minimum services
are required while parked. I only ever used my Utility Mode once when I had to
wait outside QEH A&E through the early hours with just the radio for company.
With the seat heaters at full blast the power consumption read out told me that I could sit
in that two feet of motorway snow for more than a week - assuming a well filled battery. If I was really
stuck there until a thaw came 24 hours later I would simply touch the
accelerator pedal and drive away: an attempt to drive automatically cancels Utility Mode.
24 hours with a petrol engine ticking over might well empty the tank just as
it could with an EV if it was low on charge when the snow came down, but I bet no
petrol car could be on tick over to run the heater for a whole week and not run out of fuel. An EV
driver might well die of starvation but a combustion engine car driver would have succumbed to the fumes first.
Damn! Have I just made Khan’s case for him?