Europe is revolting against the tyranny of electric cars
The rest of Europe, Remainers like to tell us, is forging ahead into a glorious green future while Brexit Britain is stalling, the government backsliding one by one on its net zero commitments.
It is hard to square that narrative with what’s really going on across the channel. In March, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, registrations of new electric vehicles plummeted by 11.3 per cent. In Germany – the grown up country that’s supposed to show childish Britain how it’s done – the drop was even more precipitous at 28.9 per cent.
Apparently it’s not just Britain where motorists have gone distinctly cool on electric cars. The electric vehicle industry appears to going the same way as one of its own products when the battery charge lowers: it’s slowing rapidly to a crawl.
And it’s plain to me that the reasons in Europe are the same as they are here: electric cars are too expensive to buy, and too fussy to recharge. They have a niche as local runabouts for people with their own off-street recharging facilities, but little appeal otherwise.
Enthusiasts will point to the example of Norway, where the vehicles have a 90 per cent share of the market, but that exception merely demonstrates what has been clear for a while: people buy electric cars when the government rigs the market in their favour
In Norway, buyers of EVs pay less VAT, are given access to bus lanes or free parking in various regions, pay lower road tolls and are given the right to charge their vehicles if living in apartments. Add to that the government mandating that cars purchased in public procurement need to be zero emissions, and it’s not hard to see why sales are high.
Elsewhere, however, takeup is more moderate, and the EU’s dislike of cheap Chinese imports certainly isn’t going to help. The European Commission is currently considering whether to jack up import tariffs. This is necessary, it says, because the Chinese government is plastering the industry with unfair subsidies.
In other words, the EU is telling motorists that it wants them to go electric, but when cheaper imported products arrive on the market making it slightly more affordable for them to do so, it it cracks down on those imports. Talk about joined-up government.
It isn’t just electric cars, though. The EU is full of bluster when it is setting net zero targets, but arguably no more enthusiastic than we are about hitting them. Less so, even. Germany has a net zero target date of 2045, five years earlier than Britain, yet it has reopened coal mines.
Moreover, it’s wriggling out of its electric vehicle targets. Thanks to German carmakers, internal combustion engines will still be acceptable so long as they are capable of running on biofuels or synthetic fuels. And thanks to German homeowners, the ban on gas boilers were also watered down.
The problem, in other words, is not that Brits are lousy environmentalists. It’s that once again, Net Zero is collapsing as the public refuses to impoverish itself.
