Exposed: The Truth about Electric Cars
The real plan is to deny personal transport to ordinary people
1. Recap: The Climate Alarmist & Net Zero Narrative
If you believe the propaganda of the establishment “elites” and opportunistic charlatans who promote Net Zero as the solution to a fictitious man-made climate emergency, you might be expecting to be driving around in an electric car at some point over the next few years.
However, as with just about every part of “the narrative” these days, the truth is somewhat different to the utopian propaganda constantly espoused by the usual suspects.
Disregarding for a moment the true environmental and human impact of the Net Zero cult including, for example, the child miners in Africa who risk their health and their lives to recover the necessary battery minerals, there is no genuine intent for the common man or woman to be allowed personal transport of any kind. That will be the exclusive preserve of the elites; the rest of us will be fully controlled within our 15 minute cities - in the immortal words of the WEF, we will “own nothing, and be happy”.
We have previously written at length about the imagined climate emergency and the Net Zero “solution”. Martin Durkin’s recently released film, Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth), brilliantly tackles many of the same topics, which we covered in a number of papers:
In the first piece, Global Tyranny, we described how the entire house of cards is predicated on the untrue assertion that CO₂ is a pollutant, causing dangerous warming of the planet. That post also addressed the various agendas of the establishment class and opportunistic charlatans promoting various false narratives, including man-made global warming.
Far from being a pollutant, CO₂ is essential food for plants and as such is critical to all life on Earth. At its current level of ~ 420 parts per million (ppm), or 0.042% of the atmosphere, it is still close to historically low levels on a geological time scale - although a little above the dangerously low level of 280 ppm in the pre-industrial world. At 150 ppm, plants die, and all animal life, including us, along with them.
In Global Tyranny, we also described how the funding model for scientific research has become corrupted: “You only get money – and lots of it – if you are for the Climate Emergency.”
Martin Durkin’s excellent film addresses the reality of both the CO₂ famine and the fake consensus resulting from the funding issue. It also explains how the urban heat island effect leads to exaggerated, alarmist claims about global warming over the last century or so, which we also discussed in the second paper referenced above. Activist Propaganda From The BBC exposed the constant, dishonest propaganda pumped out by the BBC, in common with other mainstream media organisations, who have arbitrarily decided that “the science is settled” - just as they did with Covid, the transgender debate and more. The following quote is taken from that article.
There were no concrete mega-cities during pre- 20th Century weather events, nothing like the volume of water used by humans, no motorways, no airports, no massive Urban Heat Islands, which have continued to expand even since 1976 and 2003
In The Dummies Guide to UK Net Zero, we described the lack of any official, detailed plan, and explained the likely true cost of attempting to achieve Net Zero - i.e. to balance greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with an equal amount of permanent capture and storage, so that atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ (currently just 0.042%) stop rising, and then begin to fall as this trace gas is naturally cycled out of the atmosphere.
Note that, as far as we are aware, no one has identified any “ideal” target level of CO₂ at which they would like atmospheric levels to eventually settle. As noted above, all plant and animal life on Earth will go extinct if CO₂ levels drop below 150 ppm. If humanity is foolish enough to continue to demonise this miraculous life-giving molecule, we face a genuinely existential threat - the middle class virtue-signalling “useful idiots” of Extinction Rebellion have it completely backwards, as usual.
The Dummies Guide to UK Net Zero explained how, while Net Zero is an impossible fantasy, the cost to the UK would be around £2.5 Trillion. We described the full scope of likely Net Zero measures, before focussing on the implications for energy supply in an all-electric future. In UK Energy Consumption and Electricity Prices, we expanded on the true impact of the deception on the whole-system costs of wholesale and retail electricity.
Our aim throughout has been to reinforce the instinctive knowledge that so many people have about the climate and Net Zero nonsense, while leveraging our academic and professional qualifications, and many years of energy industry knowledge, to provide a detailed analysis and debunking of establishment mis/disinformation. In this paper, we will look specifically at the dishonest claims made about electric vehicles, highlighted in white in the context diagram below.
2. The Reality of Electric Transport
2.1 Summary of the Issues
As an electrical engineer and a PhD physicist who spent almost our entire careers in the power industry, we like electricity. Is there any sane person who doesn’t, given the obvious and enormous benefits this miracle of technology has brought to humanity over the last century and more? Cheap, reliable electricity has lifted billions out of our fellow humans out of poverty and, in the West at least, we have foolishly begun to take it for granted.
However, we emphatically do not like the ubiquitous grifting involved in the Net Zero scam; the lies that we can easily electrify everything and benefit financially at the same time. There are many complex components of the deception, as we have already covered extensively in the previous articles referenced above, and we touched briefly on electric vehicles in these papers. However, recent growing interest on TwiX has prompted a revisit to the subject - especially the cost aspect - in a little more detail.
As with so many topical issues these days, “everyone knows everything” about the pro’s and con’s of electric cars. On the plus side, for example, they are capable of heart-stopping acceleration because full motive torque is available from standstill - they do not need to “build revs” as petrol and diesel cars do.
Unfortunately, they can also provide heart-stopping range anxiety, along with many other downsides, mainly due to the batteries. A full list of the issues includes:
Range anxiety.
More expensive to buy and insure.
More resource intensive (environmentally harmful) to build - as even the WEF admit.
Inconvenient to refuel, especially (as always) for the less-affluent without off-street parking, and for anyone undertaking long journeys which require access to the sparse (and expensive) public charging network.
Depreciate faster as they age - due to higher availability, plus concerns about battery replacement costs.
Subject to significant safety concerns in the event of a fire.
2.2 The Real Aims of the “Establishment Elite”
In the WEF reference at item 4. above, the true goal is hidden in plain sight.
Unless you are one of the rich, privileged few, you will never own and drive an electric car. The plan is that you do not drive a private car at all. As we have detailed in previous papers, it is an economic and practical impossibility to build the all-electric infrastructure to facilitate electric transport for the masses. The ordinary working people of the world will mostly be confined to their 15 minute cities and only allowed to travel further afield on public transportation - if granted a travel permit by the apparatchiks of the state, who will naturally check social credit ratings first.
Just as with Covid, BLM, the trans rights farce, institutional racism, Islamophobia, “stopping the boats” and everything else we are bombarded with daily, the true motive of the Malthusian globalist “elites” is to control the little people - us! The great irony, as ever, is that the tyranny is facilitated and promoted by thousands of neo-Marxist “useful idiots” who believe in the cult sunlit uplands of their utopian communist paradise. Turkeys voting for Christmas!
2.3 The True Costs
Above, we have listed seven of the principal flaws of electric vehicles. On the plus side though, “electric cars are significantly cheaper to run”, aren’t they?
Or might this perhaps be just one more deception in the sea of chaff and mis-direction we’ve all been subjected to in recent years? There are three key aspects to consider in any comparison of running costs between battery electric vehicles (BEV’s) and internal combustion engine (ICE) cars: Maintenance costs, taxes, and fuel costs.
Maintenance Costs
Excluding the rather large caveat of potential battery replacement, and other miscellaneous costs such as increased tyre wear, servicing costs for electric vehicles will typically be cheaper due to the relative simplicity of an electric drivetrain.
Taxes
Taxes in the UK comprise fixed vehicle excise duty (VED) and any local charges, such as the fees levied on non-compliant vehicles under schemes like the London ultra low emissions zone (ULEZ). Since most modern ICE cars are exempt from ULEZ charges, we can ignore this aspect currently - though the situation is of course subject to change at any time.
Zero emissions BEV’s are exempt from VED, while ICE cars are subject to a graded scale of annual charges.
Climate alarmists frequently argue that higher taxes on ICE vehicles are justified to cover “external” costs for the (vague, unquantified or fantastical) “environmental harm” caused by fossil fuels. The truth is that these external costs, like the entire climate alarmist and Net Zero narrative, are mostly fictional. Regardless, taxation rates are a purely political choice, which do not reflect any genuine differences in the physical or engineering costs of different vehicle types.
The reality is that the VED exemption for BEV’s will almost certainly prove temporary once ICE cars have been significantly phased out, because there will be no rationale for the government to incentivise the (currently) voluntary adoption of electric vehicles. It is also a certainty that ULEZ charging will eventually transition into road usage pricing for all cars, including BEV’s.
Political choices can, and will, be adjusted as the “boil the frog” tyranny of neo-Marxist and Malthusian control proceeds. Massive (increased) VED, road usage, and carbon taxes will be applied to electric vehicles once enough gullible “early adopters” have been bribed with these short-term exemptions.
Fuel
And so to fuel costs. Surely we all know that the costs to charge a BEV beat the cost to fill an ICE tank hands down? Not so fast…
The current Ofgem price cap for electricity is 24.50p per kWh. However, the cheapest way to home charge a BEV is on a specialised off-peak tariff, such as from Octopus Energy who charge around 9p / kWh depending on your region - but you then pay a higher rate of 31p for electricity used during the day. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say the effective cost of charging your car is 10p / kWh.
As revealed in a recent investigation by What Car magazine, the real-world range of electric cars is severely impacted by even the mild winter conditions. Typical efficiency degrades from around 4 miles per kWh in summer conditions to 3 miles per kWh in Winter.
We will be conservative in favour of BEV’s and use the more flattering 4m / kWh, which implies a fuel cost of 2.5p / mile. Compared with an ICE car which can achieve, say 50 miles per gallon (MPG) in similar conditions, with an average fuel price of say £1.50 per litre (0.22 UK gallons) - equating to £6.82 / gallon, or 13.6p / mile.
On this basis, it appears that the cost of fuelling a BEV is a fraction of that for an ICE car - and this is the only story you will hear from the climate alarmists and Net Zero fanatics. It is worth noting though that rates for fast-charging at public charging points are typically many multiples of the best home-charging rates. The typical cost of using a 50 kW fast charger, for example, is 65p / kWh (16.25p / mile) - although chargers up to 150 kW are now available at even higher cost.
However, even taking optimum efficiency for a BEV, and the most advantageous conditions for charging using cheapest off-peak home charging rates, things are not quite what they first seem.
Your 10p / kWh for home electricity is subject to VAT at 5%, or 0.5p / kWh. when you fill your ICE car at the pump, however, you are paying 53p / litre fuel duty. You then pay 20% VAT on the post-fuel-duty price so, in total, you are paying 78p / litre in tax for every litre with a headline pump price of £1.50. So much for the “fossil fuel subsidies” of the disingenuous climate alarmist propagandists.
The pre-tax price of 72p / litre equates to 6.5p / mile, much closer to the optimum 2.5p / mile in Summer for off-peak charging of your BEV. There is still a significant gap, but we now need to consider what that word “optimum” means for likely future costs.
Electricity suppliers are able to offer highly reduced rates for off-peak power because of the legacy way in which we all use electricity - in a world where we fill our cars with petrol and diesel, and heat our homes and hot water with natural gas fired central heating.
Because of our historical use of electricity in the UK - primarily for lighting, entertainment and cooking - demand varies significantly throughout the day, as well as by day of the week and by season. We use more electricity in the winter months, with a daily peak typically around 5 or 6 pm as darkness falls and people arrive home from work - switching on lighting, TV’s, kettles and so on. This leads to significant peaks and troughs in the daily “load curve”, as anyone can see by visiting web sites such as the UK Energy Dashboard.
The entire power system - generation, transmission and distribution (see our earlier “dummies guide” for details) - is necessarily designed and built to cater for peak demand. Especially in a scenario where renewables provide a significant proportion of generation, the cost of filling the troughs, by encouraging off-peak demand, can often be close to zero when the wind blows.
But what will happen when those troughs are completely filled - when everyone (in a fantasy Net Zero scenario) has a BEV to charge overnight, and a heat pump operating at a near-constant 24-hour rate? In those circumstances, any price differential offered for “off-peak” use would likely be minimal. It is more probable that the stick would replace the carrot; that the need to avoid any peak demand rate would mean morning and early evening prices being massively ramped up, to discourage electricity use at ‘vulnerable’ times for the system.
At that point, the minimum price at which you can home charge your BEV will be much closer to the ‘standard’ Ofgem price cap. While this is currently 24.50p per kWh (4p / mile in summer), we expect that to rise significantly in anything close to a Net Zero scenario, for the reasons we described in our previous papers. Even assuming that the fuel duty and VAT situation remains the same (it most certainly won’t), you could easily be paying 10p or more per mile for your “cheap” home charging in 10 or 15 years time. If and when the government starts to levy fuel duty and increased VAT on your electricity for charging (monitored by “smart” devices), you can expect to pay something higher than the 13.6p / mile that your ICE car presently costs you.
In summary then, there will be no financial benefits from driving an electric car. Even considering just fuel costs, those who can afford a BEV will in fact be paying more. Once higher capital costs, insurance, and potential battery replacement charges are factored in, the cost of a BEV will be beyond the vast majority of ordinary people - exactly as the establishment “elites” intend.
3 Conclusion
As we and others have consistently stated, and brilliantly reinforced in Martin Durkin’s Climate: The Movie, there is no climate emergency. Not even close. Net Zero is an impossible, economically ruinous “solution” to a problem which does not exist.
When it comes to the narrative around electric cars, as with everything else you are told by the establishment and their mainstream media collaborators, you are being lied to. The real intent of the totalitarian globalist oligarchs, the WEF, the UN, and the individual Malthusian and neo-Marxist crazies who want to control every aspect of your lives, is de-growth for western economies - while a privileged “elite” become ever more authoritarian and obscenely wealthy at our expense.
By the time electrics cars, heat pumps, 15 minute cities and all the other elements of the dystopian vision are our only choice, it will be far too late. The time for ordinary people to resist the treachery, and to fully mobilise an effective campaign of resistance, is now.
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The really annoying thing about the establishment’s lies, deceptions and propaganda is that they are so easily seen through, be it on climate change, Covid, wars against other countries and against children, families, motorists, farmers or whatever.
It beggars believe that so few of our elected Uniparty politicians are willing to stand up against the globalist psychopaths who are waging war on us, the people, and trying to kill us. It is also ineffably sad that so few of the general public are even aware that they are being horribly abused, see my post of over a year ago: https://metatron.substack.com/p/we-are-being-horribly-abused-by-lies.
Can we start with maxims?
1. In this world, there are resources in the world.
2. If you want to live in an air-conditioned room with deluxe treats and materials, you need to make other people do something, whether by enslavement through economic systems or convincing others through political legitimacy. No one else is going to dig up the ores, breathe toxic fumes doing industrial work while you get to play philosopher king or decide the future of mankind or do intellectual work.
3. There is variable aptitude and dispositions of people in the world. Some people have lower IQ, others are higher. If you give resources to lazy or low IQ people, they get squandered.
4. The magnitude of resources above space, under the sky and amount of available unrefined uranium/thorium in the sea is nearly endless.
5. The problem is the lack of accessibility, extractability, and ability to refine utilized resources as entropic loss is incurred when materials are extracted and processed, hence a lower EROIE for all energy-source consumption.
6. If mankind had plasma torch and infinite energy, and had advanced material-conversion processes, the quality of life would be many times higher.
7. We are on the path to self-annihilation as humans cannot control their breeding when economic conditions are good, and the availability of housing is good, and industrialization makes life comfortable; one can see a boom in fertility when fertility-producing ideologies are in effect.
8. The last drip of hydrocarbon that is extractable due to a decreasing EROIE, and using lower-density energy tight oil, vs shale vs normal and lack of discoveries of new higher-reserve, higher-density energy source, and increasing complexity required with satelite/aerial geological surveying implies, no more diesel, and fertilizer.
9. Other countries get more jealous, and every low IQ population wants your civilization the more you advance. There is also nuclear warheads to consider in the realm of geopolitics.
10. In the end, one has to enslave El-Salvador people, Chinese Labour with economic repression and exportation of inflation, take on African Child mining slaves to advance civilizational interests. And maybe even institute Authoritarian controls on the world as resources dwindle, because the alternative is mutually assured destruction, and only the scientific engineering of minds and genetic interests that don't include inclusive fitness, can make for world peace, as a higher IQ and more cooperative population is needed while killing off the fit and old and low IQ, either through coercive means or bad foods or whatever.
11. Peace can never co-exist without a show of dominance of power. Imagine being spawned on an island and you are the most intelligent person. There are many ideologies and value systems inoculated into other groups' genetics, like economic conservatism for Asiatic people or high-trust for White Europeans. Ultimately, your duty is to enslave some, make some free, and create civilization by stealing resources, bombing others into dominance and giving it to capable people. If mud-hut people or sand-people want to build their kingdom, the resources get utilized faster and you cannot access higher-energy density sources without smarter people or some AI system. Hence, all warfare is justified in mankind. Nations and empires exist because people are children and cannot make decisions about the collective future of mankind of who to kill and whom to allow to breed. If one generation or two you get 10 poets, 2 engineers or random spawn rates of incapable and capable people, males get tired and start civil wars without placation like video games, and you cannot tell people they are useless for civilization. Females don't think too much of their future either. Hence LGBTQ, whatever climate ideology, or mythologies of sex is needed to deny birth rates in the West and transfer resources to more capable populations like some North-East Asian. All can be summed up into, there is a population, there is some capability, and there is always a threat of declining energy sources, with some variable value-cognitive ego-identity function based on the demographics' genetics. The only maxim is all resources must be consolidated and given to the capable, while the less capable must be discarded at all costs. High freedom can only be afforded when there is an equilibrium or rate of resources extracted / regenerated is at equivalence, or when mankind somehow achieves energy-material conversion and has a global or collective consciousness whether through neuralink or imputed genetics that makes them work hard and altruistic or whatever, ultimately self-domesticating and self-enslaving themselves. If this doesn't happen, then everyone wants to be a nationalist ethnocentrist and we just fight each other to death. Simple as that.