IAAF blog: are we headed down electric avenue in reverse?

Date: Friday 06 January 2023

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Are sales of electric vehicles really soaring, or has it lost its spark? Vehicle makers, the public, politicians and media are all venting, but who is really to blame for this change in appetite?

It’s been brewing for a while. Many wouldn’t have noticed, mainly due to the carefully worded soundbites avoiding the environmental vs commercial arguments, but resentment towards electric vehicles (EVs) has been growing for some time.

Vehicle manufacturers, politicians, media and the public are all blaming somebody for the lack of fulfilment and nay enjoyment of electric vehicles. But who, if anybody, is really to blame?

When the Government announced the ban of all new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2030, the blueprint for what was to follow was never really laid bare. Replacing the internal combustion engine, that has powered vehicles for over a hundred years, was never going to be easy.

We’ve seen white papers on proposed decarbonisation strategies that offer little more than a utopian view, unrealistic for much of the population. And with three governments in 2022, the legacy of the Covid pandemic, and now the cost-of-living crisis, the UK appears some way off being able to make concrete plans for the future of mobility.

The reality is that many in the motor industry have become fixated on electric being the automatic answer come what may from 2030. As an aftermarket supplier told me, “electric is very much part of the journey, but whether it will be the end destination is questionable.”

Calls for a scrappage scheme to solve air quality issues potentially solve one problem only to create another emissions problem elsewhere in the world through the production of EVs. There are already solutions available to help reduce emissions, and through regular preventative maintenance and the current annual MOT inspection, vehicle emissions can be more closely monitored.

Vehicle manufacturers have been galvanised by the need to transfer away from ICE-powered cars before 2030, but has the industry settled on EVs, too hard, too soon?

The move to electric can hold many benefits, but the argument in their favour has now become very commercial, particularly in the Capital, forgetting the huge environmental benefits it could bring.

Such calls need to be properly thought out and discussed, in many ways going back to the beginning, which is where vehicle manufacturers seem to be congregating.

In October, Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares was quoted in Autocar:

“To switch from 80% fossil fuels for energy to 80% green energy takes 20 years,” he said. “By far that is the biggest lead time. Pragmatically and strategically, that should have been done first, as energy is the longest lead.

“Then the charging network. If it takes 50 minutes to charge an EV and five minutes to fill a [petrol or diesel] car, you need 10 times more charging points than we see [pumps] today. How long to set that up? Ten years.

“So 20 years for energy, 10 years for infrastructure. Then give us five years to build the EVs. The sequence is clear: energy, infrastructure, then the gun to the head to build EVs. We did this upside down.”

Then in December, Akio Toyoda was quoted as saying:

“That (auto industry) silent majority is wondering whether electric vehicles are really OK to have as single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.”

True enough, hydrogen-fuelled ICE is coming up the rails and offers something different. But that’s a story for another day.

And then there is the motoring public. EVs are currently expensive and despite what people or companies say, range anxiety is continued to be felt by many. Company car driver sweeteners are also disappearing. Eleanor Mills wrote in her Daily Mail article on 30 December of her EV experience:

“The irony is that we early electric car adopters did what politicians told us we should be doing in a bid to save the planet, promising that we would reap handsome rewards too. Yet now we’re paying a heavy price, both in stress and in financial terms.”

Cue the chorus of diesel drivers who were told the same thing in previous decades.

Mills goes on to say that the charging infrastructure already in place is not at all sufficient but “feeble”, pointing to the parliament admission that there will be 190,000 less charging points in 2030 than promised.

Regarding energy usage, in January, then Secretary of State for Trade Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP, told Parliament that “we’re going to be requiring up to four times as much electricity” to meet demand for electrified heating and transport. Many analysts fear the national grid will not be able to generate enough electricity.

And what about the aftermarket? Of course I’m biased, but we have great businesses in the sector gearing up to ensure we continue to offer affordable mobility choices for vehicle owners of any type, and federations like IAAF lobbying the Government and fighting for legislation to support consumers and businesses.

A recent report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) titled ‘A vehicle for change’¹ explored the key challenges in upskilling the industry to repair and maintain EVs and presented suggestions for what legislators can do to support those working in the vehicle servicing industry.

A key finding in the SMF’s report shows that while there is currently a healthy number of experienced and qualified technicians able to work on EVs across the sector, in 2024 the number of technicians required to meet EV demand is expected to soar, creating a significant skills gap by 2027.

The report’s recommendations included suggesting the launch of a green careers campaign to target young people and those from underrepresented backgrounds and promote the opportunities within the vehicle repair sector, primarily in EVs, and develop a medium-term credible plan to upskill technicians for EVs.

Across the whole of 2022, 1.6 million new cars were registered in the UK, the lowest level since 1992, with the EV share of this increasing from 11.6 percent, to 16.6 percent. Of used car sales, while rising, the electric vehicle share is still remotely small, with just over 14,500 used EV sales in the first quarter of 2022.

But despite the meteoric rise in the uptake of electric vehicles relative to new car sales, pure EVs only make up 1.3 percent of the 34 million cars on UK roads, so it’s not only surprising that it gets so much attention but it’s even more baffling that it now gets such a hard time.

That said, a lot has happened since the announcement of the petrol and diesel ban; government instability, Brexit, a global pandemic, cost of living crisis, and a recession is in the post. Motorists can be forgiven for feeling a little short changed, yet again!

It’s clear that work still needs to be done to set out a clear way forward. Electric vehicles are clearly a big part of the picture as the world adjusts and finds its footing on a path to severely reducing harmful emissions.

As we begin to unpick the strands of the EV situation and consider the alternative technologies that begin to come forward, is a total ban on ICE-powered vehicle sales in 2030 still the right move to make? There are more sustainable and cleaner ways of powering mobility than solely EV throughout an entire production cycle, so these must be part of the plan.

So who is really to blame and what’s actually going on here?

As ever, it’s a combination of issues. The energy and charging infrastructure is not keeping pace with expected demand, the cost of entry to EV ownership is too high and hydrogen ICE is coming up the rails as a potential, more feasible, solution to air quality issues.

Everyone is now starting to form an opinion of EVs and more critically beginning to voice it. Perhaps, as Stellantis’ Carlos Tavares implies, we’ve done everything upside down as we head down electric avenue.

 

 

^{1:  see below to download the SMF Report.}

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