"Robert applauds those that help push society forwards rather than maintain the status quo
By Robert Llewellyn on August 6, 2011 8:57 AM
It was intriguing to watch big Jezza (Jeremy Clarkson) behind the wheel of a Nissan LEAF recently, extolling its virtues.
He said it was very well made, quiet and very comfortable. I agree. I’m not that bothered by the battery hoo-haa that has ensued on the blogs, the twitters, the Google +’s and the newspapers. Blimey there’s been a lot of nonsense about them.
So much of this argument is down to supposition as opposed to experience. I would be the first to admit I’m very lucky, I’ve now had a lot of experience driving cars with batteries.
I just drive the car and re-charge it when I’m not using it. I’m not using it for around 90% of any 24 hour period, which, to be honest, is more than long enough to ensure that every time I get in, the battery is full.
What is impressive though is the continued power and reach of a TV entertainment show to steer a debate in a particular direction.
Apparently I’m a ‘new media denizen’ – I didn’t make that up but I have been called it a few times – and as such am supposed to be a proponent of decentralised, user created content that doesn’t require a monolithic establishment to give it permission to exist.
Without doubt there is a strong movement in that direction, but old school TV still has enormous clout. Only a few days ago the chief anxiety, the worry, the excuse and the constant refrain was ‘range anxiety.’ That’s what all the messages I would receive would focus on.
Then, suddenly on Sunday night and Monday morning that all changed. Now it is battery replacement cost. I swear to you, I have never received one question about this particular issue before.
I’ve had reams of, “How long does it take to charge?” “They are too expensive for the average Joe,” and “I would miss the noise of my turbo charged V6.” All those comments were very common. Never once did I hear about battery replacement costs and the supposition that, just like in mobile phones and laptops, batteries are rubbish.
A brilliant bit of new obfuscation feeding into the fear of the unknown, you have to hand it to the middle aged men in jeans, they certainly know exactly what they’re doing.
I don’t just mean the men we see on the screen, I mean the men behind the scenes, (they all wear jeans) whose remit it is to keep us feeling happy about what we’re doing now. It’s called entertainment. It’s nothing new; I’ve been using the same system for years in various forms to try and influence and steer public opinion.
Entertainment is a great medium for doing this – make people feel good about themselves, suggest that what they are thinking and feeling is correct, denigrate any viewpoint that is in opposition to this and try and get a few laughs.
The only difference between what I do and what the aging jean-wearers are doing is that I have always done it to try and instigate change, to suggest that we might be able to live in a way which is less corrosive to ourselves and our home, you know, the world.
What they are doing is exactly the opposite. Even though the evidence is now irrefutable – so much so that even they acknowledge it – they want to carry on like they have been for the last 30 years.
What my experience in the Nissan LEAF has shown me more than anything else is that, whether we like it or not, the reassuring aspects of ‘motoring’ we have all grown used to are going to change beyond recognition.
I’m not talking about motive power or energy storage, I’m talking car ownership; what, indeed, a car actually means. The way we use these vehicles now is unsustainable.
We’ve got so used to the word sustainable that it’s almost ceased to have meaning. If something is unsustainable it means it will, eventually, stop doing what it set out to do. We, as in individual beings, are unsustainable; we tend to die fairly predictably.
Using a fuel we extract from the ground, then transport and process before we burn it is in its very essence unsustainable. Only one thing can happen to this system, it will stop.
What we do now, in the new industrial revolution, is either come to a grinding halt because of this or find a way to move to the next level in a way that IS sustainable.
This is the key with electric vehicles. They are really only 10% different from their fossil burning relatives; they have evolved out of the same swamp. They are complex machines made in big factories but the one difference is absolutely crucial. They could be sustainable.
They are not at present – if we burn coal, oil, gas or, dare I say it, uranium to make electricity, then they are only a partial improvement, but the crucial point is, you can make an electric car move without burning anything.
Next week, I will discuss the hydrogen argument in great detail because, of all the excuses not to change the way we consume energy, that one is the real humdinger."
Em: http://www.thechargingpoint.com/opinion ... erboy.html