Gary C
Hi, I'm Gary and this is episode 204 of EV musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles are things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we'll be looking a little bit more at misinformation.
This season of the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap the free to download app that helps EV drivers search plan and pay for their charging. Before we start, I want you to say hello to anyone who's listening to this while either driving or walking / jogging. If you could make a mental note that a lot of what we talked about in all the episodes is contained in the show notes, alongside transcriptions for many shows, we're slowly working through those. So when you get back to somewhere, you can use your phone safely and comfortably. Be sure to have a look at that.
Now our main topic of discussion today is misinformation. The very first episode of this podcast back in March 2019, was entitled "Myths and Legends. In that show Simon I talked about the key narratives that seem to exist around electric vehicles that were propagated primarily by people who didn't drive them. Things like you can't drive them in the rain, and the range isn't far enough and there's nowhere to charge them and the batteries will last three years, then you'll have to throw them away, that sort of thing. Now in the intervening five years, things have moved on a lot. Range anxiety has come and gone. The myths about batteries have mostly been not totally come and gone. But a lot of other anti EV narratives have sprung up in their place. Last season, we chatted with Claire Cullen and Quentin Willson from Stop Burning Stuff about some of the efforts they're making to combat this. As Quentin said at the time, 'misinformation will kill the EV transition if we let it'. Today, I want to address some of the more recent bits of misinformation that seem to have sprung up to help me discuss the new and improved misinformation. And how much of it is made up of complete trash versus a sliver of truth that's been beaten to death with the bias hammer. I'm joined by Colin Walker.
Colin Walker
My name is Colin Walker, I'm head of transport at the Energy and Climate intelligence unit. It's a bit of a boat, we just call it ECIU for short. We're just a group of like Think Tank analysts. We exist to ensure that all the debates surrounding the netzero transition are actually informed by the facts because there's a lot of as I'm sure your listeners will appreciate a lot of nonsense said about electric vehicles or heat pumps or offshore wind or home insulation. Our job is just to ensure that the facts are actually being put into the debate. So particularly that political decision makers are actually you know, not being overly influenced by non factual narratives we'll call them
Gary C
I like that: non factual narratives and just start using that one. So what does your role specifically involve?
Colin Walker
So head of transport, we've existed for 10 years, but we only set up our transport programme a year and a half ago. And yeah, it's to do that it's to kind of like all the debates surrounding how we decarbonize our transport sector, ensuring that those debates are informed by the facts. And obviously, transport is huge. It's the single biggest source of emissions in the UK. So it's a big thing to focus on. So 99% of my time is focused on the electric vehicles debate, because that's where we feel the greatest again, euphemistically, we'll call them narrative challenges exists. So it's just really about understanding the kind of the myths that are doing the rounds in the press, and carrying out research, gathering the data, and working with journalists to get the true story out there in the media, it's not as easy thing to do certainly got away to go keeps me very busy.
Gary C
So who are your customers? Who do you sell your services to specifically?
Colin Walker
So ultimately, the people we're trying to ensure getting access to the correct information, the actual facts about electric vehicles, for example, our politicians, the people we work with to do that are journalists and the media. Obviously, I will work with a lot of other organisations such as transport environment, or EPA, England or fully charged or a whole range of different organisations to kind of get access to the information I need produced, put that into a kind of an article or a press release that is of interest to a journalist, and hopefully they'll produce it and it will get read by a parliamentarian.
Gary C
You have a lot of data to tend to back up your statements. So you mentioned briefly about some of the sources there. But talk to me about where you get your data from and how you can be sure that it's accurate and not necessarily also been influenced by the same kind of sources that you've been talking about.
Colin Walker
Yeah, it's a good question, then. One thing, which is true for so many things is to kind of like, judge your sources. I think what will work quite a lot, you know, you'll use an awful lot of government collected data we will use, we will speak to a lot a lot of organisations that represent different interests that are involved in issues such as the the SMMT: Society for motor manufacturers and traders, whilst taking into account you know, there's there's a difference between raw data and data that's been interpreted to get a message out there that furthers the interests of the organisation communicating it. So it's just always about kind of like assessing the reliability of the information that we use and the sources. And to be honest, that goes back for me. I've always had a personal bugbear about in a world of social media, people are so reliant, and I get this all the time I get people going, Yeah, but some guy on YouTube told me this. And that is not a credible source of information. I get people I will put up, you get a lot of people who go "I know this bloke who's got an EV and he's going back to petrol and he hates it. But actually surveys consistently show that 90% of EV drivers plus have no intention of going back to petrol diesel. And that's where I think the debate really suffers is that people's inability to understand the difference between a kind of statistically relevant survey with a decent sample size and one anecdote told to you by some guy you met in the pub.
But I think we've got a real problem when we're trying to challenge some of the myths that are doing the rounds about EVs as people don't differentiate between the two. And I literally got into this exchange with someone yesterday, who kind of went awry, that survey showing 90% drivers it only had 536 samples? Well, actually, that is actually still a relatively kind of sophisticated sample. And I shared it shared with him, others that had survey sizes of 3000s, you know, and they went "Yeah, but that's just EV drivers. That's bias." You're like, well, how, if you want to know what percentage of EV drivers want to go back to petrol and diesel? How could you possibly ask anyone other than EV drivers like you're going to ask people who drive petrol cars, if they have intend to go back from their EV to petrol? It doesn't make any sense. So there's a real lack of understanding about statistics and sample size. And I don't expect everyone to get that. But I think people particularly in the age of social media don't necessarily, aren't necessarily equipped with the tools to differentiate between what is a credible or not credible source of information. And that is really screwing up the debate around a whole range of different things across society. One small part of that is the electric vehicle debate.
Gary C
The other aspect of that, which I find particularly annoying, is when someone comes up and says "This happened with an electric vehicle. And it's bad, therefore, all electric vehicles are bad. But when this when a similar thing happens with a fossil fuel car, it doesn't mean that all fossil fuel cars are bad."
Colin Walker
And what you've got there, I think, is you've got this kind of vicious doom loop that the media really contributes to here. Unsurprisingly, people are particularly interested in stories of a new technology. So the media will jump on any opportunity if that for example if there was a fire and it is reputed to have been an electric vehicle and in almost all cases that isn't that is newsworthy, that is put front and centre on the BBC or the Telegraph's website because they know it'll generate clicks. So that because people see reported in the news people therefore think this is newsworthy, this is an issue. This is something I should be concerned about. But a diesel car bursting into flames is not unusual. It's not considered a newsworthy event, it doesn't get reported. So people just simply don't understand how many car fires so are every year, something like 100,000 vehicle fires in the UK every year, between 25 and 35 people in the UK die every year in a vehicle fire. Not a single one of them recorded instance of someone dying in the electric vehicle fire yet, we will know when there is one. It'll be tragic, but it will be jumped over by the press. So make this 24 hour news cycle desire for like clickability clickbait getting people going through to their links, drives this kind of completely distorted reporting of risk. And yeah, people just are coming away with this notion that EVs are going to burst into flames and are death traps and I was like if you are worried about driving a vehicle and it bursting into flames with you in it, the best thing you can do is drive an electric vehicle. If you want to minimise the risk of that happening, ditch your petrol car immediately. That is a comparative deathtrap statistically to getting in an EV. But yeah, people have got a very different impression because the stats at them that sense of risk is not being communicated.
Gary C
'Internal combustion engine' the clues in the name.
Colin Walker
It really is that my sister's a firefighter she's been to enough car crashes on the M6 to know that petrol and diesel cars burn and can set fire and there are definite challenges of electric vehicles in terms of once the fires going putting them out. That is a challenge for the fire service and I think is they often don't the fires don't take hold that quick. And you've got much more you're much more if you're in the car with an EV that's about set alight you're gonna get out of it before the fire is bad. I just think yeah, risk wise to have an EV.
Gary C
Let's go through and cover at a fairly high level some of the myths that tend to persist because, you know, I've been driving electric since 2018. And of course, the big myth was, your car won't go anywhere because it's, you know, the range is too small, and there's no way to charge it. And that's those have kind of gone away. But the ones that tend to persist at the moment are buying an EVs a big risk, because you might be left with a big bill for a new battery. And then the other side to that is the batteries. They only last about three years, and then they go into landfill. So we've got what I've termed Shroedinger's Battery: it's too expensive to replace, but it's cheap enough to throw into landfill.
Colin Walker
Or, I mean, I think Schrodinger would have a field day with almost all aspects of the electric vehicle debate. Well, yeah, there's there's a whole number of myths like so what do want me to start specifically with that one about batteries? Yeah, I mean, if that was true, why the car manufacturers confidently offer eight year warranties on the batteries that they sell. You don't do that, if there's a risk that you'll end up paying out and fixing lots and lots of batteries because you bankrupt yourself, you offer the you offer warranties that you are confident will result in you very, very, very rarely ever having to fix something under warranty. So that in itself is a kind of a bit of a vote of confidence in the kind of health of batteries. And you know, EVs haven't even been around that long. We're only beginning to approach the stage in which maybe some of the very earliest electric vehicles are beginning to come to the end of their lives because the average life of a vehicle was about 14 years. And you know, you've got people on this and going the batteries outlive the vehicle. The quite often when the vehicle comes to the end of his life, the battery can still be repurposed for something. So there was a great story about how battery packs from Nissan LEAFs that come to the end of their lives are being repurposed as energy storage. Ajax stadium announced that. The Jaguar Land Rover is opening is taking a used batteries and using them to build an energy storage facility to help balance a grid. So actually, what often happens is that the batteries outlast the life of the car. Which had a really good survey in which they spoke to their EV owners. And they found that even people owning vehicles are about.. EVs that are about eight years old, their average battery life was still 92%. So they were losing about a percent in battery degradation every year. And that's much much lower than the kind of like the doomsayers on the internet will tell you, but it but that's the problem is that this perception that the batteries will die and you'll be landed with a 10,000 pound bill to replace it take root. And the government has come into .. from quite a bit of criticism from House of Lords committee recently for not doing enough to tackle all the misinformation it's doing the rounds. So we do need more credible sources of information, offering people that data that reassurance that this isn't a problem. There's why autotrader I know are pushing for, you know, kind of WTLP style tests, the expected health of a battery and each individual vehicle. So you're buying a used vehicle with some confidence of the battery getting in it will be will last for quite a long time. And that's incredibly important. The second hand market's where 80% of us buy our cars, it's where the vast majority of people are going to make the transition to EVs. That I do think that that is a significant barrier preventing people from getting a second hand EV. So I think government and industry could step in and offer some kind of data and tests that can offer consumers more confidence when buying a second and levy.
Gary C
I want to come back in a little while and talk about the House of Lords report because I know you did a quite substantial thread on that. So we'll go through that a little bit later. But talk to me about the recent Advertising Standards Association ruling that EVs aren't zero emissions. Now, apart from the tautological problems defining zero emissions and zero emissions at tailpipe while still having an office for zero emissions vehicle. What's your whole take on that?
Colin Walker
Is just quite frustrating. Look, I get it. I mean, I think most people who buy a zero emission vehicle will understand that actually at the present as we're transitioning to a zero emission economy, there's still some emissions will be produced in manufacturing and building that vehicle. But the vehicle itself doesn't produce any emissions from the tailpipe. And it's terminology nomenclature that we have used now for quite some time to define a vehicle which doesn't produce any emissions from the tailpipe. It's what we will use, as you say the government has introduced a zero emission vehicle mandate. It is asking manufacturers to increase the proportion of zero emission vehicles that it produces and sales every year. And now the ASA has told people that it's not allowed to advertise those vehicles to achieve those targets call them zero emission vehicle that's it feels like I feel a bit sorry for the car manufacturers a little bit they've been set these quite ambitious targets. And now they've been told they can't advertise their vehicles as their mission to achieve a zero emission vehicle mandate. It's unhelpful. I think some a conversation between government and the regulator needs to kind of be had to kind of like agree on the terminology that is used. And I think the problem for the ASA is I don't agree with their ruling but I have a little bit more sympathy with it if there weren't other rulings that are kind of really quite inconsistent. So the one it said in which it allowed the likes of Toyota and Lexus to carry on referring to their hybrids or self charging hybrids. Apparently that's okay. Apparently, you can give people the notion that they can buy a car that magically kind of produces electricity from thin air, rather than from burning petrol in a controlled internal combustion engine, that that's apparently okay, you can make that claim but you can't say that a battery electric vehicle's a zero emission vehicle. And it creates a false equivalence between those different vehicles suggests that they're kind of all the same when it comes to environmental impact. But we know with the grid, the UK is grid as it is producing about 40% of electricity from renewables, well over half from zero or low emission carbon sources that are carbon driven in the UK and EV being driven in UK over the total cost its lifetime produces three times less co2 than a petrol car, and that that figure will get higher and higher as our grid gets cleaner. And yet people aren't allowed to refer to those vehicles by the terminology that we've all been using in the sector for years now.
Gary C
Now, how does that link in with some of the work that you've done around the non fuel emissions such as brakes and tires because I forget where it was now, but I read a an article recently, I think it was US based that basically said, EVs tear through tires at a far higher rate than internal combustion engine ones. You and I know that that's not particularly accurate. What's What does the data tell us on that Do you know?
Colin Walker
Firstly, to transition to EVs are good because they don't produce any carbon dioxide which is bad for your lungs. They also don't produce any particulate matter from the exhaust pipes because they don't have one. But it's also worth noting that you know exhaust and particulate matter emissions from the exhaust pipes of petrol diesel cars has been getting much, much better years because of things like to move to Euro five and then Euro six and Adblue and particulate filters. So an increasing share of the particulate matter in the air that we breathe is coming from non exhaust sources, primarily tire wear, and brake pad wear. And so some people as you say, have been saying that EVs are no better than the petrol diesel cars they're replacing because they're heavier, therefore they produce more tire wear. The story is nowhere near as simple as convenience is that I think the other big one here to talk about is brake pad wear. And EVs produce up up to 95% less brake pad wear than petrol cars because they do not use their brakes. You know, the number of stories of mechanics who work on EVs, who say one of the biggest problems they face is brake pads seizing up because they are never used and actually advise people to sometimes stamp on their brakes, just to kind of keep them free to avoid that kind of challenge. But they just rely on their regenerative braking, and regenerative braking, not only puts electricity back into your battery, because it doesn't revolve any friction, it doesn't produce any particulate matter. And what was really interesting was that they looked at how big a problem these different sources of particulate matter were in different environments. Now, the reality is, is that of all the non- all the particulate matter that comes from non exhaust sources, tire wear is the biggest source of particulate matter produced when a car is travelling at speed, like a motorway. But people don't live on motorways. So if EVs do produce a bit more tire matter, they're often producing it in environments in which there's not really many people around to breathe. But when you go to an urban environment, where obviously people live in fairly high concentrations, because cars are travelling slowly, tire wear is fairly insignificant as a source of particulate matter. brake pad wear is much, much, much more significant. And because EVs don't really produce particulate matter from brake pad wear EVs are generally significant improvements over petrol cars for air quality in the EPA in the places where people breathe the air. And that is why I think it was an Environment Committee. Therefore, they concluded that the shift to electric vehicles will be represents a net improvement for air quality in the UK
Gary C
In the interest of balance, I do have to say, though, that as an EV driver it is because of the torque, and that it's very easy to put the foot down and spin the wheels a little bit more. And that will contribute more to tire wear. But it's not. It's not a fact that it's an EV. It's a fact that it's a powerful car. And you know, when I had, when I drove German sports cars, I had exactly the same problem, even though I didn't have an electric drive train under there. Yeah, that's marvellous. Let's talk about some of the Twitter threads you've posted with, you know, facts and stats. The telegraph - and we will come back to them again in this discussion - posted that EVs charge using public charges are more expensive than petrol and you toook them, and took them down a peg or two.
Colin Walker
So Well, that was then reporting on figures from Zapmap, and I know from some replies from the head of comms at Zapmap on that thread that they weren't particularly happy with how the Telegraph reported their figures, because the way they presented it was that anyone charging on the public charging network would be paying more to fuel their cars than if they were driving a petrol car. What's that Matt said that that is only the case. If you're relying solely on expensive, rapid and ultra rapid charges. And from what I've seen of surveys carried out by people like EVA England, is that EV drivers that is not a behaviour that most EV drivers do. It is most EV drivers can and do charge their vehicles at home. A lot of them can use those kind of like cheap nighttime tariffs and make driving an EV spectacularly cheap, and that if people are using public charging points, they're not doing it as much as the Telegraph would have you believe and often will be using slower cheaper residential charges rather than solely rapid and ultra rapid vehicles. So my problem with the way the Telegraph presented that is it gave the impression that everyone - and it is a common behaviour for EV drivers to charge their cars solely on expensive, rapid and ultra rapid charges. And that is not the case. And it resulted in the erroneous claim that any EV being charged on the public charging network will become more expensive to fuel than a petrol car. And that is not true. Yeah,
Gary C
I always equate it to, you know, if I drove a Range Rover that gets 12/14 miles to the gallon, and I only refilled it at motorway service areas where the petrol there is incredibly expensive. That's kind of the equivalence that they're trying to draw.
Colin Walker
And that that's what frustrates me is that we know that petrol car who does all their filling up for their petrol car and motorway service stations? No one does. When because unless you're incredibly rich, and it doesn't matter, people go out of their way to ever avoid being caught on the rare occasions in my past when I've ever had to do that I feel so stupid of myself for like having to have got to a point where I needed to fill up on the motorway, right? So that same motivation and driver is going to discourage people from using those charges unless they have to. I think they have to do more in the day and age because of the range and an EV isn't quite as big. So if you are doing a long journey, there's probably going to necessitate a stop at a motorway service station. But the majority of current EV drivers charge is gained if they're charging at home. And that just wasn't wrttenin that article at all. And that's what annoyed me. That's why i took to Twitter
Gary C
The Telegraph again, funny that, did another article saying that the crashing second hand car market is slamming the brakes on electric vehicles. T
Colin Walker
They, they they published that story literally a week after the SMMT released data shows the second hand market growing 91% in the year, almost doubled in size in the year. And then literally a week later, the Telegraph says that the second hand market is crashing. Now what was quite interesting about that, and this is a very trait that's particularly displayed by the telegraph is they'll often have a very sensationalist negative headline isn't actually then backed up by the article underneath. The article itself refered to that smmt data. So, like, how could you possibly write that headline while citing data that completely contradicts it? I feel there's a real effort to jump on the figures that suggest that sales of new EVs are kind of the way to which they're increasing is slowing a little bit and it has in a few months, I suppose the figures in terms of overall market share of new car sales at EVs has been a little disappointing. Once forgotten in that reporting is for example, in January EVs are the second fastest growing fuel segment in terms of new car sales. They grew year on year by over 20%. Petrol was like down at 7% and diesel fell 10%. The fastest growing is plug in hybrid electric vehicles at the moment. So obviously still have a battery. But then so then, so there's efforts to then try and say, Oh, but the secondary markets crashing as always like that is literally not backed up by any data. autotrader have said they're finding that demand for secondhand EVs in over the past year has increased by over 60% used EVs are the fastest selling fuel segments on their site. They.. an EV will spend less time being advertised before it's sold than any other type of car. And all of that that's all out there. And it's just completely ignored. And it was based on a couple of conversations they seem to have had with some kind of car dealers. That for me is an example of anecdotal evidence that is not statistically significant compared to the smmt saying this is what the overall market looks like.
Gary C
Totally agree on that. One of the episodes that we did last year we had Quentin and Claire Cullen from stop burning stuff on and we'll loop back to stop burning stuff in a little while. But the quote that Quentin gave me on that discussion was 'misinformation will kill the EV transition, if we let it'. Now you did a massive thread on some of the anti EV articles out there. It was prompted by the House of Lords report criticising media for misinformation. I don't know whether you can remember all the detail that you've put in there. But you kind of chunked it down into a number of sort of subgroups. Do you want to go through some of those forests, please?
Colin Walker
Yeah. I think that's where it was like over 60 tweets. I'm not sure if many read the whole thing. But I almost want to I almost deliberately write them big just to kind of communicate the scale of the misinformation that we're dealing with. So I have to wait to fit this long otherwise I'll be missing stuff out. The context of that is the House of Lords Environment Committee produced a report on how the transition is going. And it's cited a number of challenges. And one of the challenges it said was the government wasn't doing enough to promote the positives of EV ownership and tackle the misinformation being spread about EVs and much of our media and the media. Much of our media just decided to prove their points in the week afterwards by just there was a deluge of ant-EV articles. We counted 20+, mainly in the Telegraph but alos The SUn, The Times, the mail got involved, and we felt the need to kind of tackle some of them. Did a big thread that's got to try to address all the different kinds of themes of misinformation about you These that those those contained in those articles. The big one, which I've kind of already talked about is EV sales. The notion that they're plateauing or the EV transition is somehow tailing off or a columnist in the sun even tried to claim that EV sales are falling, which is just categorically not true. So I've addressed that one second and markets growing not maybe as fast as we had hoped at the moment, but the second hand market where most of us buy our cars that's booming, to be quite honest. And so that is a good side, as Auto Trader said, because they're seeing secondhand EVs reaching price parity with their petrol equivalents. They're saying once you remove the barrier of higher upfront cost, it's evident that the demand is there. So that was a really positive thing to see or to try to say, but a lot of the things that they said in these barrage of articles, the notion that they're prohibitively expensive, but as I say, yes, the upfront ones are more expensive, but it's on the second hand market that we're seeing quite apparently being achieved, and we're probably expecting more and more cheaper EVs beginning to arrive from the likes of China, which is why the likes of Bloomberg are predicting that will reach price parity for new EVs of petrol equivalents in 2025. Next year, Ford say that they're going to shift their whole EV strategy towards smaller, more affordable electric vehicles. And Tesla making their big announcements about doing an affordable EV like well, they weren't they but you know, that's quite significant when someone like Tesla makes that kind of life. And that's that kind of focus. What other things did they say? Only a minority of households have private off street parking, which they can benefit from cheap charging tariffs? I mean, that is just manifestly not true. Although this is quite an instrument because this does people have meltdowns with me on Twitter when I make this point, which is that up to 70% of UK households have access to private off street parking. people refuse to believe that that's true. Often people who live in kind of terraced houses in London, it's hard to imagine that quite so many people. I'm someone who lived in London utill under a year ago, and I now live in Cumbria. And you live in a rural area like this, and many more people do have access to private streets. So this notion that it is a problem for the transition at the moment that it's much cheaper for people who have driveways, the savings are nowhere near as great if you have to rely if you can't charge your car at home. But firstly, it's misrepresented the number of people that affects because the majority of people can charge a car at home and us cheap tariffs should they say wish which makes it maybe as cheap as 2p per mile to run, which is mind boggling very cheap. But it's also not a reason to call the whole transition off. It should be caught up for us to pressure governments to do more to come up with solutions to meet enable people who can't even have a driveway to be able to charge their vehicles using their household supply.
Like firstly, VAT it's just completely unfair that you pay more VAT to charge your car to public charge and then to charge your car at home. That's ridiculous. But also, you know, people like KerboCharge who were on Dragon's Den, you know, that's that ability to instal a gully that allows you to run a cable from your house, under the pavement without causing any disruption to the pavement users and charge your car using your household chargepoint. That's a brilliant solution. And it's just being held up by fairly byzantine planning laws at local authority level that with a bit of warmth, and a bit of direction from central government could easily be overcome. So there are solutions there. I just get frustrated when papers point out that there's a flaw in the transition. It's not 100% perfect, no surprise, it's a brand new technology that takes the time. Like you know, when trains were invented, we suddenly didn't have all of our railways there in one go. It takes time for these things to be developed. And it's the same with the EV transition. So I get frustrated when if something is imperfect, then let's call the whole thing off rather than something is imperfect what can we do as newspapers to use our influence to influence government to use his power to introduce the solutions that will overcome a problem? So yeah, there was there was that one? There was? Oh, yeah, I mean, linked to this, this notion that EVs will impoverish the middle classes. And then like how how can a car that can be run as cheaply as 2p per mile might be something that could impoverished some middle classes? It's, it's just a scare mongering. Someone else claims that EVs are just bad products and the petrol cars are superior. And that's the first time I'd seen that one. And like, this is clearly someone who has not driven an EV. I mean, like just the sheer acceleration, the quietness, the space inside the vehicle is just so phenomenal that that is why 90% of EV drivers never have any intention of going back to driving a petrol or diesel car. If EVs were so bad compared to their petrol equivalents, everyone will be moving into an EV going, This is rubbish and going back and that isn't happening.
Gary C
My favourite one was actually I think it was the Daily Mail that posted two articles, one saying that all the charges are empty. And the other one's saying that the revolution has been undermined by the lack of charges that you kind of we can't have it both ways. Can you?
Colin Walker
Yeah, I made that point on Twitter, we got the two headlines up and when you are... EVs are damned if they do and damned if they don't. So you've got there's two big areas where you get that complete contrast and reporting. You've got actually three you've got one this latest one for the Mail is oh my god, people charging queues for public charges. People getting into fights to access it, which I've never seen, but they kind of like to report it. So there's that one, so either either charges are too full, or they're all empty because no one's buying EVs. Well which one is it? You've got EVs are too expensive no one can afford to have one. Then when the second hand markets booming and prices are coming down quite drastically on EVs to make them accessible to lots more people who are they depreciate too much this is awful. Which one is it? Which one is it? You can't. And I think I think the other one is this. Yeah, that there's that notion mysteriously that's current recently that EVs, rubbish cars, they're terrible to drive and petrol much better, literally on the same page. On the same day, the motoring section of the Sun announces that the Volvo X 30 is its Car of the Year. So this is this is a really interesting contrast you get within individual papers, you've got the comment sections, often kind of like wailing against EVs, and kind of like, getting quite hysterical about them. And then the issue in the same paper in the motoring section, there'll be doing a rEVw going this cars amazing, not six in three seconds, it's our car of the year. And so you've got this kind of real contrast that they'd completely contradict themselves. And it's quite amusing to watch really.
Gary C
Now there's some fairly major and well funded groups out there such as net zero watch, who are pumping out quite a lot of the well, anti EV, anti renewables stuff, and you'd like to take them on as well. Now, how much of what they say is plain lies, how much of it is Paltering, which I believe is a phrase that you've used on one of your threads and how much of it is true? What what's what's the percentage? What's the proportions there?
Colin Walker
I'd say about I'd say only about 10% is pure out and out lies maybe 10 to 20, saying that only a minority of people have access to off street parking. That's an out and out lie, that's just not true. That data clearly shows the opposite, I would say about 10 20% to about 10% is about true in that people are off street parking, the EVs are actually more expensive to run, if you're often a poor household. And if you're richer one because if you're a poor household, you're more likely to have to rely on off street parking. So on public charging, which isn't make sure you'd be more expensive to run than someone who can afford to have a house with a driveway. Obviously, in places like London, there's some incredibly expensive houses without off street parking so it's a bit of unique place. But that is fair. And that that is unfair, that it shouldn't be more expensive to run an EV for poor households than rich ones. But everything else in the middle, I think is this notion of paltering, which is a word I only learned recently from my job, which is this notion that where you take something that is an element of truth, and use it to mislead that I would say that's about 70 80% of it.
Gary C
I've done a whole episode on paltering. Yeah, it's it's rife, it's rife. And it's, it's interesting, because a lot of paltering people think is greenwashing. And it's not quite the same thing. But it's kind of the ballpark there. Now, you also have a few run ins with people like Howard Cox from fair fuel. And Barry Crampton and who, I don't know whether, you know, he's actually got a second social media account, which it's like an anonymous one. And he's rabidly anti EV. on that. How do you deal with people like that? Because there's, there's two ways you ignore them? Or you engage with them? And what What's your preferred sort of approach on that?
Colin Walker
I suppose there's a couple of different things. I think I'm happy to engage with someone who's maybe coming at it from a different side of things, if they're willing to debate an argument, good faith, I am willing to change my mind on something if someone comes to me with some data that proves that what I am saying is wrong, and it's rep, it's boring. It's like, actually, it's this. I have done that in the past. I think when I first started, I probably didn't recognise enough that for an awful lot of people who can't charge their cars at home that EV Driving isn't as anywhere near as cheap as perhaps Perhaps I was saying, and when people came to me and showed what it was actually, like, I changed my mind. And if I feel that someone is willing to kind of have an honest debate, and I'll happily debate with them, but if they're not, then I generally try to ignore unless they have said something a bit personal, I will probably say, we're probably not fair doing that. I'm going to push back on that a little bit. Or I will try if you say something that's kind of categorically untrue, and they've got quite a few followers, and I feel that they probably kind of have some influence. I will respond and go Well, actually, what you've said is false. The data actually shows this because I suppose a lot of my decision about whether or not to engage with people is determined by how influential I think they are. But I feel sometimes when they've got like 3000 followers and I feel they're quite influential and misleading their followers I feel it's probably the responsible thing to do to challenge back and which is why I will invest quite a bit of time doing threads to respond to like Alison Pearson talking absolute nonsense about the fire risk of EVs. Yes, she's a very influential person, a lot of people will unfortunately, listen to what she has to say about electric vehicles, and I feel you have to step up and challenge inaccuracies.
Gary C
Now, Labour recently backed off their commitment to spend 28 billion pounds on green initiatives when they get into power. What's your take on that?
Colin Walker
It was it's very disappointing, you know, probably labour of coming into quite a bit of criticism for not actually articulating much in the way of kind of concrete policy about what they would do in government. And there's probably good kind of like politically strategic reasons why they've they're choosing to take that approach. This felt quite concrete a I'm someone who's concerned about the climate crisis and the impact it will have on us, it was good to see a kind of political party actually articulate something quite ambitious about what it will do to help move Britain towards netzero. But actually, there's something else that Britain has been missing for quite some time, which is investment, which is building infrastructure. We are way towards the bottom of the table of all of our comparative compared to develop western world countries in terms of like how much what proportion of our GDP, we actually invest in building stuff, and you need to invest and build things to actually grow and develop our economy. And that's probably one of the reasons why our economy has been stagnated for so long is that we haven't been investing. So for me, that wasn't just a plan to help tackle the climate crisis and get some netzero. It was an industrial strategy. And we don't have an industrial strategy. And it's driving a lot of us slightly potty that we don't really have a plan for how we are going to help Britain move towards the technologies and the industries of the future. And if we don't build in them, there's plenty of other countries are going to step in and take that market from us that in a way was a bit that was an element of it, that kind of really disappointed, I still think what they are committing to is probably slightly more ambitious to what the current government is doing. And perhaps there will be depending on this, if they win and what the size of the majority might be after the next election, perhaps they might be more confident to reassert something slightly more ambitious, but I think polling suggests it turned more people off than it turned them on. But we did some polling and found that 43% of voters were likely to interpret the U turn as labour lacking real plans for power, compared to only 25% of people who thought the flip demonstrated the labour was fiscally responsible. So isn't something that played particularly well with the public, are twice as many people more likely to react to it negatively than positively.
Gary C
Do you think that they're backing down on the financial commitment? Versus they're still going to try and do whatever they can the policies are there, but the amount of money that they want to spend may change? Or are they basically saying well, no, there's a lot of stuff, we are just not going to do
Colin Walker
That, from, they haven't, they don't seem to have dropped any particular policy, they've just rolled back on the scale of the ambition for those policies. So I think one example is that they had originally a target for insulating homes, which is incredibly important for reducing energy consumption from 19 million to 5 million. So the ambitions are in the recognition of the importance of improving the efficiency of our homes is there and there is an ambition to do something about it, it's just not as much they talk about, it's all about watering down. So their overall plan for 28 billion a year goes down to 24 billion over the entire parliament. So a significant reduction in ambition, but not necessarily on policy. Now they have made an argument, which is the economy is a mess, will be irresponsible of us to kind of like commit to these huge figures until we see what the scale of the mess is, and what we can do to actually get the economy growing again, to generate the income that will allow us to have a tax revenues to invest in these things. I get it. But personally, I think that's a bit chicken and egg because I think you need to invest to get the economy going. So it's, you know, any incoming government that next election is going to inherit a really unpleasant economic situation. So I have some sympathy with the challenges that they face. But I think they in their communications around this issue underestimated the importance of investing to get the economy going again, and I obviously liked their focus on investing in green technologies as a means of achieving that goal.
Gary C
Talk to me about some of the work that you're doing with - we mentioned Quentin and Claire from stop burning stuff. How are they? How are they leveraging your expertise?
Colin Walker
I mean, lots of WhatsApp groups with them. And we share a lot of ideas and I speak at their events and I'm going to be at fully charged. Was it everything electric this year? Yeah, in London and in Harrogate. So, yeah, we, there's been a recognition that we need to do more to coordinate, I think there's more we can do as a sector to kind of like rally around specific figures. So a lot of different organisations working in a sector will have their own figure for the amount of money that an electric vehicle will save its own every year compared to a petrol car. And I think, because we will use these different figures, we're missing the opportunity to have one figure like say, I don't know, 700 pounds a year, if all of us in the sector could be kind of agree on what that figure is and just relentlessly be communicating it, it's much more likely to have cut through. So we're doing some work to think about how we can better agree on what those figures are and kind of like ramp up our communication around them. But we certainly you know, I lean on the likes of like Dr. Euan McTurk, who kind of advises fully charged and his expertise on batteries has really helped helped me improve my understanding on future technologies and battery range and battery li- health and life. We're going to be doing a bit more this year to kind of like coordinate our activity to in the run up to a general election because I'm quite concerned that this will be the first general election in quite a long time in which transport issues actually are used as a wedge issue in which there will actually be battle lines drawn and quite public. Spats fought over things like the EV transition. You're already seeing some of the kind of like the right wing press over the weekends kind of attacking labour for reaffirming its commitment to move the phase out date for purely new petrol diesel sales back then 2035 to 2030. When we originally was before the government you turned on it last October. So they're attacking him for that. They're trying to pin, they're trying to get used to the kind of wanting to introduce road pricing. And I think by next step, they'll attempt to say that that's what Labour has planned. We know that both political parties actually are sympathetic to the idea where as fuel duty falls because everyone moves to electrics, the Treasury is facing a 30 billion pound black hole, something needs to be done to fill that black hole. And we should probably shouldn't remove all taxation from cars, because everyone will just use them loads and our roads will get all clogged up. So well, pricing. paying per mile that you drive seems quite reasonable. You know that labour is sympathetic to the idea that conservatives are sympathetic to the idea. But we also know that if one of them sticks their head above the parapet and goes, yeah, maybe we should introduce it. So the other party will attack both being anti motorist so that that debate is not going to happen in the run up to a general election. I think the best thing you need to hope for is someone winning the general election with a big majority that gives them the confidence to tackle a thorny issue like that. So yeah, just anticipating a bit more what our lines might be on the various attack factors around electric vehicles and kind of getting our house in order and pushing back against some of the stuff we might see as general election fever gets more pronounced.
Gary C
Are you in discussions with James Court and the EVA England because they're putting together a manifesto
Colin Walker
actually on my list to touch, and check b, touch base with James Court So hold definitely ask him to do that. Yes. And I've seen that I've done that. I thought their survey of EV drivers was incredibly useful, particularly for challenging some of the misconceptions that non EV drivers have about the realities of EV ownership. I think a lot of people who don't have an EV think you're probably having to plug it in every day, every day or every time we go out for a drive. And the survey proves that an awful lot of people are using public charging points, two, three times a quarter. So some of the stuff they've done there, ya know, I need to chat to them about that. And it's been quite interesting the last few months, in that we've seen industry be a lot more outspoken about what they think the government needs to do to support the EV transition. You know, they've gone suddenly for like saying halfing VAT on new EV vehicles, you know, or what more can be done to subsidise kind of like EV purchases to kind of like boost the market. So actually understanding what industry saying as well and having a bit more of a conjoined approach about you're committed to the transition, the government did a pretty ambitious thing and introducing a zero emission vehicle mandate, you know, that has to be applauded, but haven't put a huge amount in place to help people help car manufacturers help individuals buy the vehicles that they want see sold as a result of that mandate. So I think a bit more of a manifesto and I think it's a really good way for parties to actually demonstrate the on the side of motorists and the green transition by demonstrating what they will do to help people make the shift to EVs.
Gary C
I don't have any more questions. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would have liked to have talked about? I think are the
Colin Walker
One point I probably wants to make that I think that is really important for podcasts like this. And any mechanism that could achieve it is the biggest solution, I think, the best thing to combat the misinformation we're seeing in the press is the actual experience of EV drivers. We did a poll recently that found somthing quite interesting that for the first time, just over half of the members of a general public actually know someone, either a family member or a close friend who owns an EV. And we think that's quite significant because I think word of mouth the experience of owning an EV from a trusted source, a person you know that's close to the love for you and you trust what they say is going to be quite critical because I think what Allison Pearson or Matt Lynn have to say about EVs in The Telegraph is going to be trumped by post family member having bought a Tesla and gone "This thing's amazing! You should try it, seriously. Don't listen to what those guys say". We haven't experienced any of those problems. It's brilliant and I'm pretty confident that's what people say because we know that 90% of EV drivers have no intention of going back to petrol or diesel. So I think there's probably more those of us working on this side of the debate can do to think about what creative things can we do to get the voice of EV drivers out there and demonstrate the stuff that people are hearing that non EV drivers are hearing about EV ownership just aren't true. And that's certainly a challenge. I think that the House of Lords is laid down to the government which is tackle this get the actual lived experience of EV drivers out there because that will do a lot to reassure people who are wavering about whether or not to get an EV.
Gary C
A couple of takeaways from this discussion. When we chatted with stop burning stuff last season they were very focused on ensuring that the media is spreading the right message regarding electric vehicles. Colin's work is building very much on that more so. As a result of the House of Lords report discussing misinformation in the press, Colin spends a lot of time researching and putting together reports and Twitter threads about the misinformation surrounding EVs. The key difference is these are facts and data supported rather than anecdotal. It was also interesting to hear his thoughts on entities such as net zero watch, who engage in a huge amount of paltering when it comes to EVs, heat pumps, and renewables. Now for reference if you want to listen to the episode on paltering, it's number 202 from earlier this season. The discussion with Quentin Willson and Claire Cullen from stop burning stuff was episode 198 from last season, and both are linked in the show notes. My thanks to Colin for a fantastic discussion. I could ahve chatted with him all day.
This season we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. One way we're doing that is with a carbon fact, as read by carbon literacy trainer, and Snelson.
Anne Snelson
One of the easiest things you can do to cut emissions is transfer your electricity to renewable supply. That helps solar and wind producers and sends signal to fossil fuel providers saying we want to move away from oil and gas. Switching is really quick and easy. So why not give your supplier a call?
Gary C
It's time for cool EV, or renewable thing share with your listeners, scientists have discovered a tiny bacterial minion that converts carbon dioxide into stone. Now we've talked about carbon capture before on the show. It's a proven technology with some serious downsides such as cost, scalability, high energy use, and the fact that a lot of the captured carbon is then pumped right back into oil wells to pump out more black gold. Well, researchers in Wyoming may have found a potential solution. Normally, if you pump carbon dioxide into the ground, it will over time crystallise into a form that is safe for the environment. The problem is this takes anything up to 10 years. In the meantime, lots of this carbon dioxide escapes, as any geological fault will allow it to head back into the atmosphere. And it's all just really really not ideal. There is a bacteria called geobacillus which can speed the crystallisation process up dramatically. In fact, it can cut 10 years down to just 10 days. The idea is that carbon dioxide is pumped into empty oil repositories, which have been mined out. Bacteria creates an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase and the carbon dioxide is crystallised as a byproduct. If this can be scaled up, it would be a bit of a game changer for carbon sequestration.
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Colin Walker
Deathtrap statistically thanks for listening