Subscriber Extra: Why asking 'what do you drive?' has become a political hot topic
Politicians' EV reluctance shows the need for education and investment
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What car do you drive? It’s a seemingly innocuous question, but one that seems to have been causing trouble for various politicians lately.
That’s because, while government policy is firmly pushing towards banning the sale of all new non-zero-emission vehicles by 2035 in a bid to lower the UK’s carbon emissions, not every politician seems keen to embrace the switch.
On Newsnight recently, Alok Sharma admitted that he owns a diesel car - although he emphasised that he doesn’t drive it very much, instead using public transport to travel from his Reading home to Westminster each day. He also said his next car “will most certainly” be an electric vehicle. Still, given that Sharma is the president of the COP26 climate summit, and thus a key figure in the government’s drive to reduce the UK’s carbon output, his revelation was questioned by many.
Meanwhile, Allegra Stratton, the prime minister’s climate spokesperson, said she drives a “third-hand diesel Golf”, because she doesn’t “fancy” an EV just yet. She cited the need to make occasional trips to visit her parents, who live more than 200 miles away, and raised concerns about the need for long breaks to charge on the way.
Now, Sharma and Stratton aren’t alone. BBC News produced a round-up of which vehicles various political types were driving, showing that EV uptake was slow across the political spectrum. (It's worth noting that Keir Starmer drives a hybrid and Grant Shapps owns a Tesla.) Among the various responses the BBC received were lots of ‘we’re working on it’ answers, with suggestions about the need to work out details relating to charging points, and so on.
The frustration is that many of the various reasons given for not going zero-emission aren’t rooted in the realities of modern EVs. If Sharma really doesn’t use his car much and employs public transport for long journeys, an EV sounds like an ideal solution. And Stratton’s 200-mile trip is easily within the capabilities of multiple mass-market EVs now available, enabling her to likely find more convenient charging closer to her destination.
But my intent is not to knock politicians on either side of the political divide, nor to tell people what they should or shouldn’t drive. As you’ll know, during this complex transition period, Autocar firmly believes that you should choose the powertrain that best matches how you use your car. Depending on your use case, that might well be an EV, or one of various flavours of hybrid or a car with a pure-combustion engine. It’s important to consider the environmental consequences, but when you factor in the impact of switching cars, it’s not a simple equation.
As EV technology progresses, it will rapidly be the right choice for an increasing number of people - and we suspect that once many people make the jump, they’ll wonder what took them so long. But making the switch to electric can be complex and confusing. It involves fundamentally changing how you interact with your car in terms of fuelling it, and how you use it.
That politicians are having trouble trying to navigate that path shouldn’t be a surprise, then. But perhaps it should serve as a reminder that if they want the public to make the transition, they must make it clearer and easier. They need to showcase the benefits of EVs to people, and to invest heavily in developing the infrastructure to calm largely overblown and misplaced fears of range anxiety. If they want to the EV changeover to be smooth, they need to realise that action is required to make people make the switch.
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