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This morning, I read an article in the Express. Now it is true, that the express is strongly leaning towards Conservative thinking point, but this argument is absurd. According to the article 2/3 of UK drivers want this ban pushed further into the future.
There is a scheme which gives companies ratings based on their environmental, social and governance positions in order to allow investors to know that they are investing in companies that are thinking about the future.
This is good! Of course we should know.
However, this has (intentionally or not) been set up to fail on its own. It seems that the rating does not look at whether a company emits small amounts of carbon, or makes low carbon products but on the Dollar value of the risk/return.
Tesla’s ESG score is 28.5, giving it a ranking of 41 out of 85 USA car companies or 8,192 out of 14,666 in the world.
The companies below are all oil companies with lower esg scores are as follows:
Royal Dutch Shell ESG Score: 35.1 with a high exposure risk and strong management rating.
TotalEnergies SE ESG Score: 29.2 with a medium exposure risk and strong management.
Repsol SA ESG Score: 26.7 with a medium risk and strong management.
Equinor ASA ESG Score: 32.0 with a high risk and strong management.
It is entirely possible that the esg score is being misused by companies like this, however what is clear is it is misleading consumers and so must be changed (as whatever the current aim, this score was set up to inform not to mislead).
A quote from Bloomberg business on this scheme stated “the most striking feature of the esg rating system is how rarely a company’s record on climate change seems to get in the way of it climbing up the esg ladder or even to factor at all”.
It seems obvious. Into one car you simply put electrons, into the other car you pump as much as 50kg of fuel, which uses more resources?
Over the lifetime of an electric car, roughly 30kg of raw material will be used. A combustion engine car will use 17,000 litres of oil.
Continue reading “Apparently fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars”In September Tesla sold more cars in Germany than Audi A4 BMW 3 series and Mercedes c class combined.
Why is this important? Well firstly the Tesla cars are more expensive. As a result they naturally compete against similarly priced cars with a combustion engine. This is why this news is so exciting – it is clearly taking an enormous part of this well established market.
What is particularly concerning, is that these are the people which car companies make their most profit from. Those people with less money, will tend to either buy used cars – no extra money for the established players (though with supercharging and various other things like data, Tesla can profit), or buy small runabout cars – these tend her very small profit margins, and anyway even if you managed to make 20% profit when you’re only talking about to the car that costs £5,000, you still have to sell an awful lot of them to make substantial rewards.
Indeed the next few years are perhaps their last chance to fight back. This is because with the Tesla gigafactory in Berlin, the number of cheaper Tesla cars will explode in the next few years. 5 to 10 years after this many of those will join the used car market at prices that could quickly reduce cheaper cars demand as well.
Where are we (my family and I)? We have been liking the idea of going electric for some time. Unfortunately someone wrote our car a few years ago – too soon for us to go electric. However (as I wrote about a few weeks ago), we have just jumped in having found an old tesla s for far less than normal in the UK. Indeed with the current price of petrol, we think that it will only be about 7 years before we save the purchase price in reduced cost of travel
Continue reading “Tesla has made more sales than Audi BMW and Mercedes combined in their home market”This should not be news to people, but because of the rubbish that is spread by many with vested interests in the current situation, it needs to be dealt with again.
So the argument is that because electric cars battery does not last forever, but every part of the combustion engine car does, the electric car is going to make more waste.
Continue reading “Fossil fuel cars make ‘hundreds of times’ more waste than electric cars – according to a Guardian article, despite what most media tries to claim”A recent trial, by the police have suggested that a tesla model three may well be a better car for police work, despite many doubters suggesting that it would never be able to handle work like this.
The average blue light run lasts between 7-15 minutes, yet the tesla model 3 has been able to take part in runs over 4 hours on active deployment, and it is thought to be possible to do more than 200 miles of blue light advanced driving on one charge.
Continue reading “UK police looking at changing their cars to tesla model threes – paramedic and fire cars may follow”Why is this good news for the natural world?
One of the problems, is that for many people they have never driven an electric car. As a result the only experience that they have with electric vehicles is something like a milk float – quiet to be sure, but not exactly fast.
Hertz, however has realized that between the extra longevity of electric cars, and the reduced cost of servicing due to them being so much simpler, and the reduced cost of powering them, it is likely that they will make more money from an electric fleet, as well as helping the environment.
Tesla for their part, is not giving a discount, all these cars are being bought at full price. not only that, but once all these cars are on the roads, millions of people each year will experience them. This in turn is likely to increase the demand for many of those renters, who will buy electric next time they need a new car.
It has been stressed, that no paperwork has been signed, so this is an area which we will have to watch this space.
There is a constant argument made by those who like the combustion engine car. They want to add up all the emissions that are released creating the electricity and therefore suggest that the electric car is worse.
This argument quickly runs into problems: an electric car is so much more efficient that it is irrelavent.
Continue reading “Do not be mislead, an electric car always has lower emissions than an equivalent combustion engine car”Norway has had incredibly generous electric car subsidies. This has meant that the number of people changing to electric cars are so high that the tax from gas guzzlers is falling faster than they anticipated. Electric cars are already 77.5% of new cars sold. This compares to the UK at 15% of new cars being electric, and the USA 2.6%. I find the USA particularly strange as they are the country which has lead to the rise of Tesla- though admittedly given the rise speed that tesla has been growing, this is probably out of date. With tesla, if the numbers are just 3 years out of date the number of deliveries has trebled (if you look back to 2013, only 8 years, there is only 20,000 sales, yet in 2021 936,000 were sold 4700% growth in 8 years).
Continue reading “Is Norway having problems funding their country without combustion engine cars”It has been recognised in many circles but fossil fuels have been a problem for a very long time. Generally the argument has gone, there is nothing that can replace them.
What should we do about companies who were pushing the idea that was nothing to replace fossil fuels, while at the same time working to stop electric cars ever coming to market?
Some people might argue that in a free market society, you can do nothing. That has to be wrong. Exxon bought the lithium ion battery patent back in 1966, and then completely suppressed it -this is why the Sony Walkman only arrived in 1991, precisely 25 years after the patent was given when it expired. Chevron Texaco did something similar in 1999, when they bought the right to certain battery chemistry, and a particular type of battery plug in the hope of stopping that technology ever coming to market in the form of a battery for a car.
Car and fossil fuel companies cannot be allowed to get away with this. Indeed it has to be illegal.
Indeed if it isn’t, the free market system must change otherwise these companies will have the ability to make the fight against climate change that much harder.
There needs to be a way to inflict significant damage on a company which intentionally fights against the long-term human interests in order to maximize short term profits. Perhaps the only way to handle this is to fine the share holders? If the share holders know that they are going to be financially liable for any bad behaviour, this will force the value of the company down when ever they misbehave.