There’s been plenty of recent debate on the subject of switching from internal combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles, and it seems that we are all fixated on the concept of swapping one form of energy for another, without stepping back to look at the bigger picture.
Imagine that the motor car didn’t exist, and that someone had come up with the idea that in order to transport a person weighing less than 100kg from one place to another, we should encase them in a metal and plastic cocoon weighing around 2000kg, and carrying either 50kg of highly flammable fuel (petrol) or 100kg of toxic chemicals (batteries).
We would probably think the inventor was deranged and that the idea would never become a reality. And yet here we are, making extensive and destructive use of the motor car, spending extraordinary amounts of money, and using valuable resources, most of which are wasted on simply transporting the...