I can’t help feeling smug. I bought an all-electric car just before the start of the Iran war. Since then I’ve watched petrol prices rise exponentially, while my motoring power costs have actually come down.
Before the Iran war, I used to spend about £80 a month for fuel for my hybrid car. Now, one month after buying the new car, I have used less than £40 worth of electricity. This was at the standard rate.
This equates to 6.37p per mile and compares with the 13p per mile which I used to get out of the hybrid.
Now I am on a much lower tariff which equates to a mileage rate of just 3.5p. This should reduce my monthly motoring energy costs to less than £20. This is a colossal saving.
Average pump prices at UK forecourts increased for the 43rd consecutive day on Monday to reach 158.3 p per litre for petrol and 191.5p per litre for diesel, the RAC said. The latest pump prices represent hikes of 25p per litre for petrol and 49p per litre for diesel from the day the war began on February 28.
Like many people I rarely drive long journeys. So, I don’t have to worry about “range anxiety”. Long journeys can mean half hour stops at public charging points which charge three or four times the standard rate.
Even so, with a range of about 200 miles after a full charge, it is possible to do a long journey to friend or family without using a public charging point.
I believe it is considered good manners for visitors to receive a full charge overnight provided they pay for it. I have even heard how people who have no electric car have installed their own charging points for their visitors.
So, what’s not to like? Why buy a gas-guzzling SUV with a smelly exhaust?
Are we going to be taken in by the petro-chemical industry’s lobbying? The raw product for renewable energy is the air we breathe and the sun which warms us.
It doesn’t have to be dug out of the ground at huge expense or transported over vast distances.
It is not subject to market fluctuations or to the whims of Russian tyrants, Arab sheikhs, governments of religious fanatics or geriatric, loony American presidents. The only cost is the expense of converting natural forces into electricity and storing it.
It does not even have to be processed by massive solar farms on good agricultural land. Solar panels can be installed anywhere. In some countries no new house can be built without them, and even in the UK there are houses with solar panels which supply all their domestic electricity and export a surplus to the grid.
Clearly the energy firms are going to have to put their prices up some time, but it is difficult to see how petrol at the pump is ever going to be less expensive than electricity for electric cars.
Yes, the price of electricity may be influenced by the oil and gas markets, but our electricity is not solely dependent on fossil fuels.
UK electricity is produced from wind and sunlight as well as from coal, gas and oil. It follows that the more we use renewables to create electricity and the less we use gas and oil, the less dependent electricity charges will be on world wholesale prices for fossil fuels.
Some people say that the wind doesn’t always blow or the sun shine on our green and pleasant land.
Perhaps so, but the UK has a windy climate and the days when there is no wind anywhere around our shores are few and far between.
Some dinosaurs, with their heads firmly buried in the sand, believe that if there are more oil and gas wells in the UK, UK petrol prices will fall.
“Drill, baby drill,” says Trump without explaining why it is that petrol prices have risen by as much as a third in parts of an oil rich country like the USA due to the war.
How can he, Farage and Badenoch deny that petrol prices are governed by the laws of supply and demand and that, if the supply on the world market is cut by one fifth, the demand and the price will increase worldwide?
Many people are right to point out that there will always be a place for gas and oil in our economy. Yes – for lubrication, if for nothing else.
But the lesson of the Iran war is that oil and gas should never be “king” as coal was “king” in the nineteenth century.
It is not in the National or international interest. It is simply outrageous that a power crazy, vengeful bunch of murderous religious fanatics whose mindset belongs to the Middle Ages should be in a position to hold the modern world to ransom.
It is time the domination of oil is consigned to history.
I have not yet discovered the downside of electric cars, but there are bound to be some. So far so good. Renewables are the future: the future is electric.