Are electric cars the answer to climate change, new vehicle sales – or neither?

Are electric cars the answer to climate change, new vehicle sales – or neither?

The Tesla Model 3 and Jaguar I-PACE were the UK’s two top-selling new cars in April 2020. Harry Metcalfe explains why are manufacturers so keen to sell you an electric car and how he thinks the new car market will change in 2020.

We do need to point out that April 2020 wasn’t a normal month for new car registrations. Just 4,321 new cars were registered, a 97.3% drop from April 2019 from 161,064, of which 658 were Tesla Model 3 and 367 Jaguar I_PACE.

Harry has been driving and testing electric and hybrid cars including the Tesla Model 3 for per six months now and has some useful advice for all those thinking about buying an electric car.

He points out that the main reason for the drive to electric power is to enable manufacturers to hit the required EU fleet average of 95 g CO2/km across all the models they sell. Whilst this will indeed reduce CO2 and NOX emissions from cars themselves, they are still a long way from being “zero emissions”.

(the change to electric) feels like a Middle-England solution…

Harry Metcalfe

Harry also explains why he thinks consumers should think carefully about going electric and why he believes we all need to change our transport and car-buying habits.

This is a thought-provoking video and well worth 20 minutes of your time -and it isn’t all bad news for the internal combustion engine. Enjoy.