Leaving aside the pros and cons of converting all road vehicles to electric instead of fossil fuels, why has this decision been taken now…and not twenty years ago or in twenty years? Was there a specific trigger? Are we acting too soon…or too late?
The overriding triggers were probably awareness of Climate Change, and wide enough acceptance that its causes had to be urgently addressed. Vehicle emissions were an early, obvious and (perhaps most importantly) a universal candidate for action.
Even now, with the global decision in place and demanding “emergency” action, there are pros and cons. But 20 years ago, the design of electric vehicles was not advanced enough to present a viable option, so technical solutions focused on making internal combustion engines cleaner and more efficient.
And they emphatically did so – pressed by a raft of standard laws - first with exhaust catalysers, then computerised engine management systems, closer control of air: fuel mixtures, better distribution of the mixture through injectors and the inlet manifold, more precise and tamper-proof engine tuning and transistorised timing, undersquare combustion chamber ratios (short and fat instead of long and narrow), things like throttle positioners that change settings when the car is idling or decelerating, looking at options like air injection (the old after-burner principle), exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) to reduce NOx, changing combustion chamber shapes to increase flame travel, spark control valves in the vacuum pipe, and improving the driveability of lean-burn engines that supply a richer mixture near the spark plug to ignite a weaker mixture, closed crankcase ventilation systems, dual diaphragm vacuum advance units
These most obvious and accessible improvements have now been achieved, and the scope for further improvement is on a downward graph line.
While all this was going on, parallel effort and investment was advancing EV technology – above all long-range battery design – towards a point where they were at least on roughly the same page as internal combustion engines for cost, range and user convenience.
That graph line has been heading upwards, so at some point the two lines were going to meet, and presumably cross. And, up or down, both were heading towards a third and very red (!) vertical line on the right-hand side of the graph that marks the point of no return on climate change.
That progression is the why and when the trigger was pulled on one of the most momentous industrial policy decisions in human history.
What we need to bear in mind is that we will not know the final result of even that one “shot” for several decades. What we do know is that the decision involves a monumental physical and logistical upheaval, and even if it does work it will not stop climate change unless the same imperative is applied to virtually every other human activity.
The exhaust emissions of motor vehicles – and everything used to make them – is a big issue. But it is not the only problem, nor the biggest.
The planet itself is not in danger. The Laws of Nature and Evolution will take care of that, even if it has to go into uninhabited limbo for a million years. What we are trying to save is our ability to live on it, and to do that, in the most basic terms we must live in a way that absorbs more carbon dioxide than we produce.
