On Friday I bought a new car. Well, new to me. A Skoda Enyaq iV, all electric, a showroom demo car, 21 months old, 11,000 miles on the clock. My previous, a Volvo V40 diesel, had 143,000 miles + on the clock and owed me no favours. I’d acquired it in 2015 when it was a year old and had then, as I recall, 9,000 miles on the clock. Interestingly, it was sold to me as a “green” car. The speedometer on the dash, or was it the rev counter – I’ve forgotten already – had a green zone, adherence to which meant you were being eco-friendly. Then diesel started to get a bad name, not so much because it contributed to the build-up of greenhouse gases, rather because it produced particulate matter which in high concentration was bad for your health. And some German car manufacturers got into hot water because they were allegedly fiddling their emissions data. Since June I had been unable to drive the Volvo into the low emissions zone of Glasgow city centre. It was time for a change.
Over the years I’ve tended to buy my cars the way you might buy a bag of potatoes. What’s the point of agonising? I popped into my local Skoda dealer and told them what I was looking for. I was treated with the greatest courtesy, and they produced the goods. Would I care to take it for a test drive? Yes indeed.
I was surprised the dealer didn’t want to accompany me. I just had to sign a form making me liable for the first £750 worth of damages. Fair dos. I think this “going solo” trend was started by the pandemic, and has persisted. I did tell the dealer that I’d never driven an electric car before, so he kindly talked me through the gizmos. This reminded me of a time way back in New Zealand, when I was a member of the much-loved but now sadly defunct Waitemata Aero Club. I expressed a desire to fly a Tomahawk, a two-seater trainer aircraft I’d not previously flown. In aviation, if you fly a new aircraft type, you usually undergo a “type rating” where your competence to fly the machine is checked out. So I was surprised when the instructor tossed me the keys and said, “You can fly a Tomahawk.” I recall at that stage I had about three type ratings under my belt. So I thought, “Well, if he thinks it’s okay…” and I strapped myself in and perused the manual.
There was a knock on the Perspex canopy. “Couple of things you might want to know about the Tomahawk…” Only in New Zealand.
After that, taking the Enyaq out on to the Stirling roads didn’t seem so daunting. I was, immediately, utterly, besotted. I love the silence. I had a second test drive, got a good offer on the Volvo, and clinched the deal.
I was amused by the reaction of some acquaintances. A sage shaking of heads and remarks about “range anxiety”. In the gym, somebody said, “How far away is your house? Ten miles? You’ll get here okay but you’ll need to find a charger on the way home.” Then there was, “Electric’s not the way forward. It’s hydrogen. And just look at the exorbitant costs of the charging facilities!” And then, “These cars are not as green as they look. The manufacturing process is dirty as hell. And they send kids down the lithium mines in the Congo…” I asked these self-appointed advisers if they had ever owned an electric car. But none had. At least there were no sarcastic remarks, as was once de rigueur, about Skoda. “Chaos in Czecholand…” As a friend of mine remarked, nowadays people swear by, rather than swear at Skoda.
For myself, I was surprised by my own emotional and indeed visceral reaction to driving the car. This didn’t have anything to do with green credentials or virtue signalling or the smugness of the righteous. I just drove it and thought, instinctively, this is the future.
I promise not to glue myself to the highway, or pour tomato soup over a Van Gogh.
Funnily enough, driving around in my new acquisition, every time I turned on the radio the topic seemed to be, one way or another, the environment. The fact that the Tories have held on to Boris’s old seat in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election has been put down to the electorate’s angry reaction to Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emissions zone. They say politics is the art of the possible, and no matter how worthy your aspirations, you need to take the people with you. The Sunday Telegraph suggests a referendum to see if people still want to reach net zero by 2050.
I’m not sure how robust the evidence is that the ULEZ was the critical factor in Uxbridge, nor that the results of the three by-elections demonstrated much of a trend. After all, the Tories, the Lib-Dems, and Labour each won a seat. Mr Sunak is right to say the next general election is not a done deal, and Sir Keir is right not to be complacent. The only thing less predictable than the result of a general election is the result of a referendum. I think these poor people running from their hotels on Rhodes on to the beach, and into the sea, might vote for net zero ASAP.
jamescalumcampbell 