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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; Police forces in Britain are facing questions over the waste of millions of pounds purchasing electric vehicles which are not up to the job of chasing criminals or responding to emergency situations.
Police ‘waste’ £1.5MILLION on electric cars that they admit are useless for chasing criminals because they ‘can’t go fast enough or far enough without a battery change’
- Reports found cars do not meet demands of urgent response or pursuit driving
- Forces have bought at least 448 environmentally-friendly vehicles to help them
- However almost all cars and vans are being used in non-emergency situations
By MARTIN BECKFORD FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 09:04 AEDT, 24 December 2019 | UPDATED: 10:45 AEDT, 24 December 2019
Police have spent millions of pounds on electric cars they admit are useless for chasing suspects or rushing to help victims.
Forces around the country have bought at least 448 environmentally-friendly vehicles to help them meet green energy targets.
But almost all of the cars and vans are being used in non-emergency situations or by chiefs to get to work.
Official police reports conceded that electric vehicles cannot meet the demands of urgent response or pursuit driving. They take too long to charge up to be ready for 999 calls and could run out of battery before a shift ends.
…
Isn’t this senseless waste of precious police resources just the epitome of green groupthink?
Greens know renewables are not viable in their current form, at least the smart greens know this – but they still advocate spending billions of dollars building them.
Any police chief with a minute of operational experience must have known upfront that electric vehicles were useless – but they all went ahead and bought hundreds of the things.
When historians look back at our time, it won’t be the delusions of impending eco-doom which define us, it will be the mind boggling waste, the cash expenditures authorized by politicians and senior executives who knew upfront what they were buying would not work, but paid the money anyway.
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You think that’s funny? A report some months ago that the British Army are developing electric tanks.
https://news.yahoo.com/british-armys-next-game-changer-130000006.html
Britain is developing electric combat vehicles. Not just because they’re better for the environment than those old gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting tanks. But also because it will make the military a more attractive career for a new generation of prospective recruits who are passionate about issues such as climate change.
Because obviously the military needs more “extinction rebellion” minded recruits.
PC has gone too far. Col Tim Collins take on it is:
“The Army has been taken over by PC dreamers who are putting lives at risk”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/01/colonel-tim-collins-on-the-deadly-dangers-from-generals-under-the-influence-of-diversity.html
The generic phenonomenon of which this is an instance is worth noting. In general you find the Greens demanding actions in response to the alleged problem of Global Warming that, if their own theory is correct, can have no effect on it.
They also refuse to demand the actions which, if their theory is correct, are required to have an effect.
For instance, the demand by Extinction Rebellion that the UK close down its airports because flooding from intense rain in the UK. The demand that Australia lower its emissions because hot dry summer and forest fires. The agitation to switch off standby appliances, or in this case, the demand that a public service in the UK buy electric cars. The attempts by municipalities to become zero emission zones, by lowering a tiny proportion of their emissions. The demand to install wind and solar generation systems, when they do almost nothing to reduce emissions, and when, in any case, even if they did, the proportion of emissions due to electricity generation is not big enough that reducing it will have any effects.
As soon as you ask how much effect any of these proposals will have, it beccomes clear the answer is just about zero. None of them reduce global emissions enough to have any global effect even if the theory is correct, and even were they to reduce the emissions they target. Even if the West did everything demanded, both local and global emissions would be mainly unaffected.
Partly because the West is emitting too small a proportion of global emissions for its actions to have any effect. Partly because the emissions targeted by the activists are too small a proportion of what the West does emit.
In terms of the refusal to demand effective action, consider the refusal to demand that the worlds largest and fastest growing emitters reduce their emissions – China, India etc. Consider also the refusal to demand actions which would have substantial effects on local emissions – the abolition of the ICE industry, for instance.
It is possible for the UK or Germany to reduce emissions substantially. All you have to do is abolish ICE cars and trucks and make the consequent moves of population into dense energy efficient housing. Transport needs locally would have to be walking or biking, and longer distances by train or tram. It can be done, it is the way the West was in 1900 or 1920. People lived within walking or biking distance of work, leisure and shops.
It is also possible for the world to reduce its total emissions very substantially. All you have to do is persuade China and India and Indonesia and the developing world to reduce, and persuade the West to match those reductions. We could get back to emissions of under 5 billion tons of CO2 a year. It would be 1920 but with computers and biotech.
However, the Greens, at the same time as they activate for doing things that will never make any significant reducts also refuse to argue for what it would take to do this.
The question which needs careful thought is the cause of this phenomenon. My own answer, after observing it for a couple of decades, is that no-one believes in the problem and no-one believes that the policies advocated are either effective or at all possible or likely to implement.
So why advocate for them? Read Alinsky for an answer.
The measures are not being advocated to save the planet or to have any effect on local or global emissions. The motivation is quite different. They are being advocated precisely because they will not be implemented and will never persuade policy makers they should be done. Because they are only advocated in order to organize. What you want, as an organizing issue, is something that will not be done, because that way its effectiveness continues and you can lament and protest about the intransigence of the authorities. Once implemented, they are scrutinised. You don’t want that.
What you want is some large thing you can protest about, use as a basis for organisation and to come to power on a wave of popular feeling, and then quietly forget about when you are in power and getting on with the real agenda.
Look at it like this, and you see how to look at the police purchases. They are collateral damage, like the huge useless wind farms visible off the Norfolk and Essex coasts. The poor fools have been misled into trying to implement something which was only ever intended as a protest demand. Of course its not working. If you like, the activists were mistaken in their choice of an objective. It has turned out, and its very counter productive for them, to be possible to meet their demands. You can actually build electric cars, you can actually erect wind farms.
When the history of the Global Warming mania is written, 20 or 30 years from now, this is what historians will draw attention to, and some future Alinksy will lament the activists’ strategic error in picking demands that could actually be met, and thus seen to be idiotic.
They should have stuck to demanding fusion, or maybe a return to the days of sail, or the total abolition of cars, malls and suburbs. Or perhaps they should have stuck to demonstrating outside the Chinese Embassies around the world.
“it will be the mind boggling waste, the cash expenditures authorized by politicians and senior executives who knew upfront what they were buying would not work, but paid the money anyway.”
This statement sums up the entire green get-rich model so well. A false moral imperative provides their justification for the allocation of huge sums of the public largesse from which a relatively small number of connected people make huge cash windfalls at the expense of everyone else. Renewable energy is obviously the worst offender where literally trillions of dollars gets spent globally on a form of energy that is mostly worthless.
In Australia the ABC media recently celebrated that 33GW of new RE had been added to the grid. What they forgot to mention was that only 3-6GW of that energy is available at midday and usually less that 2GW is available when the sun goes down. And of course there are times when there is almost zero output, meaning you need to maintain 100% FF backup capacity, just in case.
KISS! The answer lies in all those discarded drinks cans.
https://www.metalectrique.com/
“It is possible for the UK or Germany to reduce emissions substantially … Transport needs locally would have to be walking or biking, and longer distances by train or tram. It can be done, it is the way the West was in 1900 or 1920. People lived within walking or biking distance of work, leisure and shops.”
Or, to put it another way, back in the 1920s work, leisure and shops existed within walking or biking distance of people. Not any more – and the CO2 emitted as a consequence of tearing down all those out-of-town shopping complexes, business parks and leisure centres and rebuilding them in urban areas would be enormous. And even if you could find somewhere to put them (the old industrial sites were built over long ago), would people really appreciate a factory at the end of their street?
But then, as you say, none of this is intended to happen 🙂
Look up on gridwatch.templar.co.uk for the amount of wind derived electricity on Christmas Day.
A big flat zero from wind just when everyone was cooking their lunch, and a compensation spike in generation from CCGT.
At least at present we have an alternative source of electricity.
Imagine how all the young would feel if they couldn’t use their electronic Chrismas present toys.
At 11:00am Christmas Day morning when most household switched their ovens on, this was how the grid met the UK’s demand for electricity:
37% of total demand was provided by: Nuclear 20% (maxed out); Gas fired power stations 15%; Coal fired power stations 2%.
23% of total demand was provided by: Biomass fired power stations 8.5% (using wood pellets imported from USA); All 9,711 Wind Turbines barely 7%; Solar 6.5% (luckily the sun was shining); Hydro 1%.
The remaining 40% needed to ensure all the UK’s lights didn’t go out was being imported from France, Holland & Ireland.
When historians look back at our time….
You’re expecting people in the future to be smarter than the people of the present?
Hopeful, is all I can say.
Even worse. He’s expecting historians in the future to be smarter than the people of the present.
Motel of the Mysteries
The Model S’ top speed is software-limited at 155 mph.
If chase is faster than that, the police has other options.
Chasing a stampeding Porsche 911 with a conventional ICE police car is not so easy either.
Wasn’t there a Hollywood film once where a police officer was chasing a car thief in her electric parking attendant car? Do not remember if she were successful.
It’s not that they can’t go fast enough, but at those speeds the draw on the batteries will be severe. They will either run out of battery prematurely or the batteries/motors will overheat and shut down the car before the pursuit is finished. Either way, EVs are not well suited to long, fast chases. They can be pretty good a drag racing, though.
It’s definitely true that EV fuel economy declines once you drive faster than about 50-55 mph. I don’t think (but could be persuaded with evidence) that the motors overheat, presuming that the manufacturer stuck a big enough motor in the vehicle to begin with.
I think the problem in the UK as far as EV cop cars go is that they seem to have bought BMW i3s, which originally came with 22 kWh batteries and small motors. Those things were never designed for high-speed chases. For that, you’d want at least 60 kWh and bigger motors.
To think that those i3s would be suitable chase cars was just stupid on someone’s part. It’s the EV equivalent of outfitting the force with Toyota Priuses and telling the cops to go chase cars. The newer EVs, suitably equipped, would make for excellent chase cars, provided that the department made sure to fill ’em up at the start of a shift.
By the way, don’t the UK police have radios and roadblocks? That country isn’t big enough or empty enough for very long chases, but if it were a problem they could just radio ahead. It reminds me of the time I got stopped in Nevada in a very powerful car (VW Phaeton W-12) going 97 mph, having slowed down from 120.
“Do you know why I stopped you?” he asked, this being the standard opening question when these things happen.
“I was going like a bat out of hell,” I answered. “You got me fair and square.”
He reduced the ticket to 90 mph, which saved me a lot of money and enabled me to “attend” an “online driving school” and keep the ticket away from the inquisitive eyes of my insurance company. Told me that he was giving me a break because I pulled over right away; didn’t lie to him; and didn’t try to outrun him.
“This car will go 200 miles an hour,” I replied while thanking him, “but I figure you guys have radios.”
We both laughed. I was on my way to Vegas, and told him that having gambled and lost already, I’d stay away from the slot machines. LOL
and could run out of battery before a shift ends…. – article
Well, that’s a giggle-snort all by itself.
I’ve got a great idea: having seen a series of photos of New York then and New York now, meaning 100 yeas ago and even further back, into the 19th century, why not just go back to horses and buggies? It worked in the 1800s. It can still work today. 🙂 Not such a strange idea, either.
Also watched a brief video on China’s ghost cities that are supposed to house over 64 million people, but nobody lives there. And some Congress critter in WDC wants to eliminate single-family housing in the counties next to WDC and make it all “mixed culture” and no POVs at all, so you have to take public transportation just to get groceries, like it or not. Obviously, he doesn’t do any kind of shopping and is unaware that in a city like Chicago, public transportation was in use long before automobiles became a “thing” – and still are. If i had to go back into Chicago for any reason, I’d take the train to the station, then catch a bus and walk the remainder of the way after that. POVs aren’t a “thing” unless you live in the ”burbs and have one to get to the train station or do local shopping.
The ignorance of politicians never fails to surprise me. Maybe Boris Johnson can put a stop to the EV fad as being ‘out of” or “above budget”.
A 1.5 million expense on a test is hardly worth mentioning. And in London they are allowed in the low emission zone. There is are areas of use where EV are quite advantageous so the disappointment tels more on the buyers than on the goods.
Huh, who knew?
I wonder if anyone could have predicted such a dismal outcome. Too many variables I think.
C’mon. Nothing says “respect the authority” of this law enforcement person (be it man/woman/hermaphrodite) like a crisp uniformed figure toddling slowly along on one of those Segway two-wheeled electric scooters.
No problem: just require that all doughnut shops have fast charging stations for the police to use.
/rimshot
I can agree with the facts, all I’d like to point out is that electric-powered vehicles are superior if your time between charges allows it. Until you have driven a good quality electric vehicle you can’t understand the difference in driving experience.
an electric-powered vehicle can be superior, depending on the application. Also superior is somewhat subjective and depends on application and circumstances.
Cheers,
Joe
Every time I see an electric taxi cab I just shake my head and wonder how much money the cab company is losing every shift.
Referring to “electric cars” this way is stupid – they are, at best, referring to the cheapest EVs. While there may not be cheap electrc cars right now, the claims they aare making about electric cars as a whole are totally wrong. Current EVs can charge quite fast – 80% charge in less than 10 minutes in some cases, and shortly will be true for all, or most, EVs. Driving ranges now are over 300 miles for several EVs and some are close to 400 miles. A police car does not travel very far on a shift – over 200 miles is probably the exception. As for speed, an electric car can easily outrun any gas powered car on the street. Apparently the British police bought cheap electric cars – probably Nissan Leafs first generation, which had the shortest driving range of any EV. And electric cars do not require constant maintenance – such as chaning the oil, anti-freeze, etc
Assuming 30% to 80% of full charge in 10min on 60kWh battery:
60/2*60/10=180kW
Ten police cars on charge at 180kW is 1.8MW per police station in a bright future.
I am not sure if you understand what that means in terms of grid dimensions?
1.8MW is something a large factory is using. They have their own transformer station or share one with other factories in the industrial district. A normal household is seldom using more than 10kW peak.
New cables, transformers, power stations, etc. sized up 10 to 100 fold is possible, will give a lot of jobs, take decades and cost titanic sums and resources, adding insanely to your tax bill and electricity bill.
In terms of fast charging, apart from grid limitations, the current type batteries used will have shortened life.
There is a previous article on WUWT where you can read about practical limitations on clusters of fast chargers, where the cluster has to “share” what capacity is available to the facility:
Black Friday Tesla Fail: Half a Mile Queue to Recharge
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/07/black-friday-tesla-fail-half-a-mile-queue-to-recharge/
Current EVs can charge quite fast – 80% charge in less than 10 minutes in some cases
That’s a lie. The very fastest charges take at least 45 minutes to achieve an 80% charge, and add range at a maximum of 6 miles per minute.
My God obviously not Tesla cars
Charging an electric car takes more energy than the battery holds:
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1098248_charging-an-electric-car-why-it-takes-more-energy-than-your-battery-holds
I read the article, and it’s exaggerated. I own a dinky little EV with a 24 kWh battery, and if I run it down to empty (did this once), it’ll take 25 kWh, or an extra 4%. If it was off by 15% as the article (which is 4 years old, by the way) suggested, it would have taken 27.6 kWh to recharge mine.
Look, I’m far from an EVangelist. I bought it strictly out of curiosity, and even then only because the company (Think) was going out of business and I was able to get it at a very deep discount. My other vehicle is a Ram 3500 diesel pickup, which I like quite a bit more than the EV. But I see no reason to do anything other than tell the straight truth about them.
Obama hardly ever held a news conference.
Said he would be transparent. The biggest liar president in
modern times. Said I would save $2500. My health insurance
went from $5500 to $11000.
Well done the police for admitting it.. A very rare thing, if ever, for an institution to do. Sanity has a hard job getting recognised and usually gets incorporated under the radar, so no one knows how it got there without looking under the carpet.
I saw an article about it in the English press, and it pictured one of those electric BMWs with the small batteries. Stick a big enough battery in an EV and remove the speed governor, and it will do just fine.
British Police Admit Electric Vehicles are Useless for Police Work –
Nobody’s perfect.
https://www.google.com/search?q=crashing+patrol+cars&oq=crashing+patrol+cars&aqs=chrome.
British Police Admit Electric Vehicles are Useless for Police Work –
Nobody’s perfect.
https://www.google.com/search?q=crashing+patrol+cars&oq=crashing+patrol+cars&aqs=chrome.
____________________________________
They should have known better From The START – what about Police Cars Specifications!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7822791/Police-waste-1-5million-electric-cars-useless-catching-criminals.html
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNTx-vBge9WNPpurt5uGvu6D0YAJAQ%3A1578430460897&ei=_O8UXvalNruHk74PuO2LkAI&q=Weight+police+electric+cars&oq=Weight+police+electric+cars&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.