It's the way forward – and we're not talking about garlic bread here – it's the electric car. Governments throughout the world have suddenly seen the light. Elastic trickery will whoosh us around the planet, silently, cleanly. The meadows will be greener, the polar bears will build new ice shelves and everyone will live happily ever after. But how will mankind achieve this? Well if the rumours in the
UK and US are to be believed the first step will be to offer £5000 ($7500 in the
US) off the price of a new electric car. On the strength of the huge sales that are made, technology will become cheaper and before we know it, everyone will be wondering why we ever had a dependence on oil. Happy days!
Electricity is great! We may not be able to see it but it's there every time we want it, at the flick of a switch and it's cheaper than oil. That is until demand outstrips supply. So what is needed is a plentiful source of electricity, a clean source of electricity. So it may come as no surprise to many, that whilst many of the world's journalists were trying out the Chevy Volt mule and electric cars were all over the news channels, the British government announced the eleven proposed sites for the next generation of nuclear power stations. Cynical? Maybe, but we are going to need to get the power from somewhere.
Plentiful green electricity is unfortunately further away at this point than the electric car, as a result the power for our new beautiful clean rides won't be that clean. So we have a choice, coal fired power stations, gas fired power stations or nuclear. If we choose coal or gas we negate many of the advantages of the electric car. If we choose nuclear we open a whole new can of worms, but if we are serious about electric cars it WILL be nuclear power that propels them along our highways and byways, unfortunately there are no other ready alternatives.
So are the British government using the "green" argument as a smokescreen to gain favour with the public when it comes to nuclear power stations? Probably, as with only £250,000,000 - enough for 50,000 vehicles - earmarked for the project, most of the subsidies will be taken by businesses and public bodies. The man on the street will no doubt be left just as dependent on oil as ever. Mandy, Darling and Gordon Brown may well hail the £5000 being offered off a new electric car as a "green" policy, but just how green it turns out to be may only be answered by our children and grandchildren and who knows what they will be driving, it may just be a nuclear powered car.
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