![\"Giles](\"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Giles_Coren-240x300.jpg\")
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Why I\u2019ve pulled the plug on my electric car.<\/p>\n
As I watch my family strike out on foot across the fields into driving rain and gathering darkness, my wife holding each child\u2019s hand, our new year plans in ruins, while I do what I can to make our dead car safe before abandoning it a mile short of home, full of luggage on a country lane, it occurs to me not for the first time that if we are going to save the planet we will have to find another way. Because electric cars are not the answer.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t even roll it to a safer spot because it can\u2019t be put in neutral. For when an electric car dies, it dies hard. And then lies there as big and grey and not-going-anywhere as the poacher-slain bull elephant I once saw rotting by a roadside in northern Kenya. Just a bit less smelly.<\/p>\n
Two out of three roadside chargers are broken or busy at any one time<\/p>\n
Not that this is unusual.<\/p>\n
Since I bought my eco dream car in late 2020, in a deluded Thunbergian frenzy, it has spent more time off the road than on it, beached at the dealership for months at a time on account of innumerable electrical calamities, while I galumph around in the big diesel \u201ccourtesy cars\u201d they send me under the terms of the warranty.<\/p>\n
But this time I don\u2019t want one. And I don\u2019t want my own car back either.<\/p>\n
I have asked the guys who sold it to me to sell it again, as soon as it is fixed, to the first mug who walks into the shop. Because I am going back to petrol while there is still time.<\/p>\n
And if the government really does ban new wet fuel cars after 2030, then we will eventually have to go back to horses. Because the electric vehicle industry is no readier to get a family home from Cornwall at Christmas time (as I was trying to do) than it is to fly us all to Jupiter. The cars are useless, the infrastructure is not there and you\u2019re honestly better off walking.<\/p>\n
Even on the really long journeys. In fact, especially on the long journeys. The short ones they can just about manage. It\u2019s no wonder Tesla shares are down 71 per cent. It\u2019s all a huge fraud. And, for me, it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n
Yet the new owner of my \u201cpreloved\u201d premium electric vehicle, fired with a messianic desire to make a better world for his children, will not know this. He will be delighted with his purchase and overjoyed to find there are still six months of warranty left, little suspecting that once that has expired \u2014 and with it the free repairs and replacement cars for those long spells off road \u2014 he will be functionally carless.<\/p>\n
He will be over the moon to learn that it has \u201ca range of up to 292 miles\u201d. No need to tell him what that really means is \u201c220 miles\u201d. Why electric carmakers are allowed to tell these lies is a mystery to me. As it soon will be to him.<\/p>\n
Although for the first few days he won\u2019t worry especially. He\u2019ll think he can just nip into a fuel station and charge it up again. Ho ho ho. No need to tell him that two out of three roadside chargers in this country are broken or busy at any one time. Or that the built-in \u201cfind my nearest charge point\u201d function doesn\u2019t work, has never worked, and isn\u2019t meant to work.<\/p>\n
Or that apps like Zap-Map don\u2019t work either because the chargers they send you to are always either busy or broken or require a membership card you don\u2019t have or an app you can\u2019t download because there\u2019s no 5G here, in the middle of nowhere, where you will now probably die.<\/p>\n
Or that the Society of Motor Manufacturers said this week that only 23 new chargers are being installed nationwide each day, of the 100 per day that were promised (as a proud early adopter, I told myself that charging would become easier as the network grew, but it hasn\u2019t grown, while the number of e-drivers has tripled, so it\u2019s actually harder now than it was two years ago).<\/p>\n
There are, of course, plus sides to electric ownership. Such as the camaraderie when we encounter each other, tired and weeping at yet another service station with only two chargers, one of which still has the \u201cthis fault has been reported\u201d sign on it from when you were here last August, and the other is of the measly 3kWh variety, which means you will have to spend the night in a Travelodge while your stupid drum lazily inhales enough juice to get home.
\nTogether, in the benighted charging zone, we leccy drivers laugh about what fools we are and drool over the diesel hatchbacks nonchalantly filling up across the way (\u201cimagine getting to a fuel station and knowing for sure you will be able to refuel!\u201d) and talk in the hour-long queue at Exeter services about the petrol car we will buy as soon as we get home.
\nWe filled up there last week on the way back from Cornwall, adding two hours to our four-hour journey, by which time Esther wasn\u2019t speaking to me. She\u2019s been telling me to get rid of the iPace since it ruined last summer\u2019s holidays in both Wales and Devon (\u201cIf you won\u2019t let us fly any more, at least buy a car that can get us to the places we\u2019re still allowed to go!\u201d).<\/p>\n
But I kept begging her to give me one last chance, as if I\u2019d refused to give up a mistress, rather than a dull family car. Until this time, a couple of miles from home, when a message flashed up on the dash: \u201cAssisted braking not available \u2014 proceed with caution.\u201d Then: \u201cSteering control unavailable.\u201d
\nAnd then, as I inched off the dual carriageway at our turnoff, begging it to make the last mile, children weeping at the scary noises coming from both car and father: \u201cGearbox fault detected.\u201d CLUNK. WHIRRR. CRACK.<\/p>\n
And dead. Nothing.<\/p>\n
Poached elephant.<\/p>\n
I called Jaguar Assist (there is a button in the roof that does it directly \u2014 most useful feature on the car) who told me they could have a mechanic there in four hours (who would laugh and say, \u201cCan\u2019t help you, pal. You\u2019ve got a software issue there. I\u2019m just a car mechanic. And this isn\u2019t a car, it\u2019s a laptop on wheels.\u201d)<\/p>\n
So Esther and the kids headed for home across the sleety wastes, a vision of post-apocalyptic misery like something out of Cormac McCarthy, while I saw out 2022 waiting for a tow-truck. Again.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t let that put you off.<\/p>\n
I see in the paper that electric car sales are at record levels and production is struggling to keep up with demand. So why not buy mine? It\u2019s clean as a whistle and boasts super-low mileage. After all, it\u2019s hardly been driven…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why I\u2019ve pulled the plug on my electric car. As I watch my family strike out on foot across the fields into driving rain and gathering darkness, my wife holding each child\u2019s hand, our new year plans in ruins, while I do what I can to make our dead car safe before abandoning it a … <\/p>\n