Dear Katy,
I liked your today’s Guardian supplement MY GREEN POD but disappointed by the uncritical praise for electric cars and the assumption that somehow they are going to help us solve the problem of pollution and carbon emissions.
Apart from environmental issues, electric cars just mean carrying on ruining our cities with electric powered traffic jams.
Electric cars require enormous amount of fossil fuels to dig up and process the minerals to make the batteries and the rare minerals are in very limited supplies.
The tyre and road dust that all rubber tyred vehicles produce have now been recognised as being as copious and as bad as diesel emissions, – 50% 50% emissions from tyres and exhaust. From the Guardian itself:
And professor David Kelly has said they are not a solution.
And, BBC:
So I would ask you to look at what we in Bath are doing in promoting steel wheeled trams, http://www.bathtrams. uk/which can run directly on renewable energy without the need for batteries except perhaps in small areas in the city centre.
Furthermore they are proven to attract car drivers and to rejuvenate cities. In UK when trams are re-installed they really have cut congestion due to the power to attract previous car drivers.
We look forward to your response.
With best wishes
Dave Andrews