The motor car has been the pinnacle of personal mobility since it was invented in the late 19th century, and in that time it has evolved very nicely. But, in just eight years’ time we will see the the biggest revolution in the history of its existence – or will we?

You see, the government has got it into its head that electric power is the solution to everything. They want cars, planes, trains, buses and even our homes to run on clean, renewable electric energy, which is fine, in an ideal world – but we don’t live in an ideal world.

There are some very big hurdles to not only leap, but also climb and we need to see a future that has a diverse and logical structure. Electric cars has been the go-to point for every government since the Paris Agreement in 2015. The first announcement in 2017 saw Britain set a target to ban ICE vehicles (internal-combustion engine) in 2040; however in 2019 with Theresa May’s departure as Prime Minister, she announced that the UK would be the first country in the world to set a target to become carbon-neutral by 2050. This inevitably caused the ban on ICE vehicles to be brought forward to 2035 in February 2020, and then again in November 2020 to 2030 – which is now less than a decade away.

So is this the end of the internal-combustion engine? Not quite, you see, the ban only affects new cars and 2035 will still see plug-in hybrids, which use petrol engines. There will still be millions of ICE cars on our roads for many years after the ban comes into affect, and in recent months, there has been a breakthrough. In my opinion this technology could see the ICE live on alongside the electric car and its synthetic fuels, or E-fuels as they are more commonly known. What it is, is a breakdown of hydrogen and carbon dioxide that is already in our air. The hydrogen is zapped through a formula called electrolysis and the carbon dioxide is used as a raw material to create methanol. Companies such as Siemens and Porsche are investing in this technology as it keeps classics and current ICE cars on the road and it is another solution to carbon-neutral mobility, if the fuel is made from renewable energy. This is one of the downsides to synthetic fuel – it’s a very high-energy-consuming formula and people may think that because you are still burning the fuel you are still causing pollution. They would be right to an extent, but the process works to enable any greenhouse gases to go into the atmosphere will be captured by carbon capture technology. So, you’re preventing anymore harmful carbon emissions reaching the atmosphere, which enables it to be carbon-neutral in the process. I think this has great potential in saving the ICE, but at the moment prices for this fuel are still very high and we will only start to see a drop once there has been enough produced. Porsche reckons that by 2026, it will have made around 550 million litres.

Moving onto the present with electric cars and I personally think that they have many flaws and need to fill some big boots to win the hearts of the consumer. Firstly, the range. I know they are forever being improved but my logic is this: the bigger the battery, the more range, however the car is more expensive and once that battery begins to degrade, so will the bill for the owner for an replacement battery. A smaller battery means, less range, but makes the car cheaper to buy, but will also degrade and be expensive to replace.

Then we’ve got the infrastructure itself. There are currently 35,000 public chargers in Britain, but to achieve the 2030 ban, the country will have to install at least 400,000 and at this moment in time the government isn’t pushing or investing to get more on-street chargers installed or in petrol stations. One solution would be to install on-street chargers in lamp posts as this would be a practical and easy way to charge an electric car at night, but the transition is still too slow and the government really needs to push if it wants to put its money where its mouth is.

My biggest gripe I’ve got with EVs, however, is the battery production, which is a wash of toxic emissions and finite materials. Cobalt and lithium for example are very delicate and need to be changed from being adopted in a battery cell for an electric vehicle. Current car manufacturers are working on improving the ingredients that goes into their batteries, such as solid-state batteries which are alot smaller and promise a greater distance on one charge, but it’s not here yet.

A study recently was published by Polestar, the electric car company from Volvo, revealed that the battery production of one of their electric cars compared to a conventionally-powered Volvo XC40, meant that battery production was so high in emissions that you had to drive the Polestar 48,000 miles before you can balance the emission levels with the XC40. Now, in my view, a zero-emission vehicle is one that is zero emissions from the get go – not after 48,000 miles.

On the face of it, hydrogen fuel-cell looks like a valid and sustainable solution and I think it still is. Not only does it give the consumer good range out of a tank, but it offers the practicality of ICE motoring and in the process of only produces H20 (water). There are problems though, there are only two cars on sale today that offer this alternative fuel: the Toyota Mirai and Hyundai Nexo. Both of which are ruinously expensive at more than £60,000, and the infrastructure in the UK is very poor, with less than 20 hydrogen filling stations, so there is further investment that needs to be backed by the government for this to be a viable solution – which it could still be for heavier industrial vehicles like trucks and buses that wouldn’t work with an electric motor.

So, the country has got a lot of work to do to meet its ambitious target to end the sale of new ICE cars, and only time will tell to see whether that goal is achieved. My outcome is this: you need to give the consumer choice, it can’t just be a one-way street. We need a balance of electric power, hydrogen fuel-cell and low-carbon synthetic fuels to reach Britain’s target of net-zero by 2050.

By Cameron Richards