Nick Molden discusses with Chris Caldwell, CEO of United Renewables on his podcast Conversation on Climate.Nick and Chris discuss why electric vehicles may not be the future, the challenges and opportunities around adoption of electric vehicles.
Nick Molden, and former Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt, have joined forces to confront the thorniest issues facing the industry. The podcast brings together two of the sector's most experienced independent analysts . Their podcast - Molden and Schmidt - is available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple and the Emissions Analytics website.
We've heard about the big idea - taxing cars by weight and mileage, not engine type. We've looked at the science, the money, and the practicalities? But what about the politics? What could persuade governments to revolutionise the vehicle taxation system? How could this concept overcome the scepticism of the press, public, and politicians who don't like meddling in the costs of driving? Those are the big questions we explore in this final episode of series 2.
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Fear, uncertainty and doubt in an age of decarbonisation
Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. This rhetorical triptych is increasingly used as an insult to describe interventions from anyone who deviates from the current environmental orthodoxy. When French philosopher René Descartes sat down in the seventeenth century Netherlands to write his Discourse on Method, he also faced FUD.
In our last newsletter we looked at the unethical challenge set by a high profile academic to see whether you would die if locked inside your garage with an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle running.
Increasingly simplistic calls to #Stopburningstuff and #Stickyourselftothings have recently been accompanied by another call: that anyone who challenges the virtues of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) should shut themselves in their garage alongside their idling internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle for an hour, to see whether they emerge to tell the tale.
Friday 18 September 2015 saw Dieselgate break. This was the culmination of a growing dissonance between real-world nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions and official values for cars and vans. The rupture was created by governments picking a technology, for the purposes of decarbonisation, where too much was taken on trust within a fragile governance system.
The term ‘environmental justice’ can often be used in a mushy, socialistic sense, but behind it is a deadly serious concept. Put broadly, it means that all parts of society should be treated equally under environmental law, or that everyone has the right to the same protection from pollution and other harm from emissions.
When an exploding star led to the observation of supernova SN 2003fg in 2003, it was nicknamed the ‘Champagne Supernova’ due to its unusual brightness, and its inexplicably great mass. Many supernovae eventually succumb to their own weight, leaving behind a black hole. Are we at this stage with battery electric vehicles (BEVs)?
The evidence clearly points to using full hybrid electric vehicles (FHEVs) as the best route to rapid, low-risk decarbonisation of cars and vans for the next decade. FHEVs cannot deliver the biggest aggregate reduction in principle, but with scarce battery resources and higher manufacturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of battery electric vehicles (BEV), FHEVs can deliver more CO2 reduction now, and potentially for some time to come.
Following the success of our recent newsletter ‘Letting the cat out of the bag: The great plug-in hybrid subsidy’ our Founder and CEO, Nick Molden has showcased our thorough testing process.
In a recent newsletter, we set out Schrödinger’s Car, drawing a parallel with the famous Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment, where a cat in a box is both dead and alive until the box is opened.
