Michael Gove out on a limb?

On the BBC this morning Michael Gove announced the government's new strategy of banning all petrol and diesel cars by 2040 .... or did he..?

I suspect, as Environment Minister,  Mr Gove is kite flying .. that's ultra low energy ... and doesn't have the agreement of either the Prime Minister or his cabinet colleagues to such a far reaching plan.

He also mentioned local councils being expected to provide and fund scrappage schemes... bet that came as news to them.

But might it be possible for such a plan to reach fruition by 2040?

Well for a moment let's set aside the many billions the Chancellor of the Exchequer would lose in fuel duties and vat and the obstructionism of the oil companies to any change ... oh and a certain Donald Trump who doesn't believe in global warming...

All those aside, could the car makers do it?

Yes, they could. Volvo recently announced it would only produce electric cars by 2020, BMW will offer electric versions of all of its cars by 2020 and Mercedes is close behind.

All of the car makers are rushing to get into Formula E as fast as possible to accelerate their own battery development programmes, the PSA group and Renault and Jaguar Land Rover are in there already, BMW and Mercedes are joining in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

Mercedes are even withdrawing their dominance of DTM to focus on Formula E..! 

Williams F1 are at the forefront of battery development in the UK, Tesla are the same in the USA with zero government support. The all electric Mini was revealed yesterday to commence production in 2019.

So in answer to the question will they be ready if asked... Yes definitely. 

Paris and Madrid have already announced car bans from their city centres within a couple of years. Currently only very new low emissions diesels are allowed into Paris. Surely London will follow very soon under the guidance of Saddiq Khan...

Of the 35 million cars on UK roads just 3 per cent are hybrids or all electric - just a few thousand - and the infrastructure is not even adequate to support that number.

In the last 2 years the sophistication and range of electric cars has improved greatly the typical range doubling or trebling to 200-300 miles, more than adequate for most average mileage drivers and the range improvement is exponential.

So there is much still to be done and the government would need to stump up big time to make it happen, to improve the infrastructure perhaps developments in induction charging like mobile phones will soon make the drive over recharge a possibility.?

Oh and then there is autonomous vehicles ....! 

I didn't hear any mention of money by Michael Gove ... but then perhaps he's already wind powered?

Graham Benge