You know what’s a nice treat for a cranky-ass writer like myself? It’s when some major media outlet publishes something so delightfully, irredeemably stupid and smug and ill-informed that it’s just begging for a nice, cathartic take-down. Thankfully, our pals across the pond at The Telegraph have served up just this sort of thing for us, piping hot, and dripping with all of the finest, most insipid fear-mongering horseshit you could ask for. This gift is a column written by Allison Pearson titled “We must put a stop to the electric vehicle revolution – before someone gets hurt,” and it’s just as bad as you think. Probably worse.
Essentially, this column is a panicky plea that all electric vehicle production be halted because of the potential dangers of EVs, primarily due to lithium-iron battery fires. Now, these sorts of fires do certainly exist, and it’s absolutely an issue that needs to be continually addressed, no question. But should all EV production be stopped outright? I don’t think so, but perhaps I’m not an expert in electrical engineering like I assume Allison Pearson is. I mean, she obviously considers herself an expert on trans issues, which I guess means she’s good at troubleshooting faulty electrical transformers, right? That’s got to be it. Otherwise, this whole screed would have been written by someone who has only been a television and radio presenter who’s written some romance novels, and that would be absurd, since that would imply this person has no idea what the hell they’re talking about. The Telegraph would never publish something like that, would they?
And yet here is this column that uses last week’s massive fire at London’s Luton Airport as one of its central points about how EV fire danger is being covered up. As Pearson puts it:
It was the same nothing-to-see-here story with the towering inferno this month at Luton airport. At least 125 flights were cancelled after a huge fire, which started on level three of the airport’s multi-storey car park, caused the entire £20 million structure to collapse. Up to 1,500 vehicles are unlikely to be salvageable. A huge deal, you might think. A topic for a heated debate at the very least, particularly as people could have been hurt but, once again, the conflagration has been tamped down. Authorities said the blaze “appeared to have been accidental and began in a parked car, believed to be a diesel vehicle”.
Well, not according to one witness, who managed to snap a picture of the vehicle that was suspected of causing the fire, which looked very like a Range Rover Evoque. There was none of the thick black smoke you would expect with a diesel fire. Instead, the blaze was focused on the front left seat of the car under which – well, I never! – the lithium-ion battery happens to be located in some hybrid Range Rovers.
Okay, great, except the fire was definitely not started by a Range Rover Evoque, it was started by a 2014 Range Rover Sport TDV6 SE, which we know because you can see the damn thing on fire in video and you can even run the license plate if you’re still not sure.
Front footage of the range rover which was first alight at luton airport fire#LutonAirport #lutonairportfire #RangeRover pic.twitter.com/djlcYX8lVo
— Sam356345 (@sam35634560605) October 11, 2023
This is some pretty sloppy reporting and writing, saying a car “looked very like a Range Rover Evoque” and then just guessing that even if it was that car – again, it wasn’t – it could have been a hybrid one, and then the battery could have been to blame for the fire. A lithium-ion battery that, again, in the context of her example there, is as fictional as Sasquatch Santa Claus.
Cleantechnica — a website devoted to clean energy, EVs, and sustainability — wrote all about this issue, saying:
The fire department identified the car which started the blaze. There’s video of it. It was a diesel Range Rover, one of the Land Rover group of cars. While there is a diesel battery-electric hybrid option for some of the Range Rover groups, there’s zero evidence that it was a hybrid.
In fact, a front view video of the car shows its license plate, and UK’s Ministry of Transport makes it clear that the car was a 2014 diesel Range Rover Sport, license plate E10EFL. Used car site Car Check confirms this, showing it has tested emissions of 194 g/km, which puts it at the top end of the emissions range for non-hybrid diesel light vehicles. Not only is there no evidence that it was hybrid, there is strong evidence it wasn’t hybrid.
Okay, so if that huge airport fire wasn’t actually caused by an EV, maybe Pearson has some other compelling evidence to bolster her idea that the world is being held at flame-thrower-point by EVs and their lithium-ion batteries, threatening to conflagrate at the slightest provocation. Maybe she has some really compelling evidence, ideally hearsay and involving at least one gazebo? Hey, we’re in luck! Look at this:
It’s not just cars. My gardener friend says he knows of two gazebos that burnt down when the battery pack powering their fairy lights burst into flames, causing third-degree burns to one owner.
Two gazebos! Burned down by unspecified-chemistry battery packs, but ones that were probably lithium-ion! At this rate, will Britain have any gazebos left?
Again, Pearson isn’t wrong that lithium-ion battery fires are nasty things and cause real damage. That’s true! Thermal runaway in these batteries is a real thing, which is what is being referred to here when she quotes Peter Edwards, chair of inorganic chemistry at the University of Oxford:
Someone who really does know the answer is Professor Peter Edwards. He holds the chair in inorganic chemistry at the University of Oxford and tells me he is extremely worried about the “real danger” posed to the public and emergency services by lithium-ion batteries which were developed by his predecessor in the chair, the late Professor John B Goodenough, the so-called “Father of the Lithium Battery”.
“Lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles can develop unstoppable so-called ‘thermal runaway’ fires which burn uncontrollably,” says Prof Edwards. “As well as intense heat, during a battery fire, numerous toxic gases are emitted, such as hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen fluoride. The emission of these gases can be a larger threat than the heat generated.”
(By the way, the fact that lithium-ion batteries were developed by a scientist named John B. Goodenough is just astounding. What an incredible name for a scientist! Goodenough! I love it. If you were looking for evidence that we live in a simulation, there you go, because that is definitely a placeholder name someone forgot to fill in.)
She also notes this about Goodenough:
Towards the end of his distinguished life, the Father of the Lithium Battery told colleagues in Oxford that he didn’t think a mass rollout was wise because of the considerable fire hazard. How lucky we are that our country’s entire future energy strategy isn’t riding on an invention that can explode at will and cause fires it’s impossible to put out…
You know what? Too bad. It’s way, way too late to stop a “mass rollout” because it’s already happened.
While the basics of some of the points in this piece are true – lithium-ion batteries do have the potential to burn quite dramatically (and also days after a crash) – the hard truth is that if you’re genuinely concerned about that and not just desperate for a column topic to get people worked up about, then you’re already deeply and irretrievably fucked. Because lithium batteries absolutely surround us. I can just about guarantee you that if Allison Pearson banged out her column on a laptop, that laptop had a nice fat lithium battery in it. Pretty much every cell phone has a lithium battery.
There are literally millions and millions of lithium batteries around us at all times, and while, yes, they all have some potential to burn, the truth is we’re not all dead. If lithium batteries were as dangerous and unstable as Pearson is trying to claim they are, then walking by any given coffee shop would sound like a July 4th fireworks show finale, with flashes of blinding light and chest-thumping explosions sending hot latte flying everywhere, a near-constant rain of shattered mugs and saucers raining down on the shellshocked heads of everyone inside.
But that’s not how reality works.
Of course, reality does also include things like the car-transporting cargo ship that caught fire possibly as a result of EVs on board – hell, we even know someone who lost a car in that fire – and things like carmakers having to recall thousands of EVs because of fire risk [Ed Note: The ship-fire thing isn’t confirmed to have been caused by EVs, but the recalls for EV fire risk have been absurd. GM recalled every single Bolt! -DT]. Pearson isn’t wrong at all to bring up these points, because when lithium-ion batteries release energy as a result of a thermal event, it’s bad, really bad — arguably worse than fires caused by gasoline. This is all very true.
But what especially sucks about this whole shit-milkshake of a column is that there are real issues brought up here, but it’s all couched in this idiotic cloak of panic and fatalism that does nothing to help anyone. Again, most of the issues brought up here have at least a seed of truth:
What a fiasco the whole electric car thing has become. Too few charging machines and then too many charging machines out of service, forcing people to drive around for a viable charging point, only to end up calling breakdown services for run-down batteries. The mileage the cars can do is a lot lower than advertised, unless you drive at 20mph (perfect in Wales, but hopeless everywhere else). The cars are too expensive, their second-hand value is risible, the batteries only last about 15 years and cost thousands to replace. If, that is, you get lucky and they don’t burst into flames first.
The charging network (save for Tesla’s Supercharger network) is a mess here in America, as well as in the UK. That desperately needs to be improved. EV range is sometimes overstated, though it’s not the issue she makes it out to be here, in that nobody is giving range estimates based on constant 20 mph driving. She made that shit up. And, yes, batteries are expensive as hell to replace, and buying used EVs can be something of a minefield. That’s true!
But most of these are solvable problems. Charging networks will improve – they pretty much have to, and, even better, there’s money to be made when someone finally does get their shit together, so that’s a pretty good incentive. I personally think EV batteries should be standardized and replaceable, but even if no one listens to me about that, I am confident that the tech will gradually improve and battery lifespans will continue to grow, as they have been, and the tech will generally develop, as history has shown it has been.
The premise of this column is ridiculous; calling for a “stop” to a whole technological development of cars because of some accidents and fires is not a serious thing to ask; it only serves to stir turds, vigorously. All kinds of cars catch on fire, and have been catching on fire, for literal centuries. You can go all the way back to Richard Trevithick’s Puffing Devil from 1801, a steam-powered pioneering car that burned itself to slag on Camborne Hill, and car fires haven’t stopped since then.
Sure, the fires aren’t the same as lithium-ion fires, which have their own considerable challenges, but gas-fueled cars catch on fire, and those fires have killed many, many people. So many people have died in car-related incidents, and while each one is tragic, we deal with it by doing all we can to improve safety from engineering and procedural and legal and every other angle we can think up.
[Ed Note: For the record, here’s how the EPA addresses the “EVs are less safe” myth:
FACT: Electric vehicles must meet the same safety standards as conventional vehicles.
All light duty cars and trucks sold in the United States must meet the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. To meet these standards, vehicles must undergo an extensive, long-established testing process, regardless of whether the vehicle operates on gasoline or electricity. Separately, EV battery packs must meet their own testing standards. Moreover, EVs are designed with additional safety features that shut down the electrical system when they detect a collision or short circuit.
EV fires are nasty, but I’m not convinced EVs are more dangerous than gas cars. I haven’t seen any data to suggest that, and I’ve heard plenty of claims of the opposite being true. -DT].
This is how human development works, and has always worked. We try things, we do our best, and, generally, we don’t just give up, especially not when someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about makes some dumb claims and some good claims, but wraps them in fear and some sort of peculiar anti-progress rhetoric, and gets some digital canary cage-liner rag to print them.
Also, the last line of the column:
Oh dear. Time to go into reverse gear, don’t you think?
… is just embarrassing.
Fuck off, Allison.
I had to deal with this with a client this week. We are doing a study for EV charging for fleet vehicles (mostly to determine if it’s cheaper from a first cost and on-going maintenance cost for this facility) and someone asked me to do research on if they were safe because of the fire risk of EV’s that would be charging in the parking lot, because that didn’t sound very safe to him. SMH
I had to check if John B Goodenough was really a person since that looks like a place holder name for a fake quote, but it appears he is real: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough
I’m sure FOX News will be reporting on this (if they haven’t already) using her article verbatim to keep the MAGA Republicans whipped into a frenzy about EV’s (for whatever reason). Let’s just say for the sake of argument that there is some basis for a few of her claims. There isn’t… but even if there was, solid-state EV batteries will be here very soon and we can move on to the next ludicrous hand-wringing point. Forget all the evil that surrounds oil production and the toxins that ICE vehicles spew into the air we breathe.
Solid-state batteries are only 2 years away, just like flying cars!
(To be clear: I’m having some fun here. I hope they get solid batteries here quickly!)
Toyota says they will – and inked a deal about a week ago to start mass producing them by 2027-2028. VW/Audi have said we may see some by 2025 (though I bet they’ll be expensive). Regardless, they’re coming.
Idemitsu has been researching it for over 20 years and Toyota partnered with them. Sure, they will be expensive when they start but like everything the price will come down at scale.
There have been a lot of battery breakthroughs that get zero media attention. Battery density has more than doubled and Idemitsu has had a breakthrough in solid state batteries, Toyota is partnering with them. It takes time to hit production but the changes are very rapid. Look at the 220 mile range of the S in 2013 to 400 miles today. Many companies have been researching solid state batteries for over 20 years, its not like they started yesterday.
Genuinely, thanks for the info.
There’s so much chaff out there in what actually does get reported on battery technology, that I’ve come to take the stance of “wait until it’s announced for production.” And it is easy to overlook the density increase of current tech, likely due to the lack of media attention.
I’m not afraid of EVs, I just don’t understand why I as an American tax payer am subsidizing luxury goods. Meanwhile for the stated goals of the current administration, we don’t even have enough power generation to electrify the plants that would build the EVs let alone the EVs themselves. As David has pointed out, charging is a fucking nightmare, and no, the hoopty Leaf does not negate the struggles he faced in finding charging.
This old chestnut. Again, for the folks in back… EV incentives exist to help bring their costs closer to parity with ICE vehicles to encourage their adoption – for the overall purpose of CLEANER AIR and to slow down the impact of ICE emissions on global warming. That benefits everyone on the planet whether they choose to drive an EV or not. Even you! You are grossly overstating the electricity production shortage in this country too. Sure, some places need more, and they’ll get it. How about this… new homes are being built at a record rate (ok, a little slower now that interest rates have shot up, but still). LOTS of new homes are being added to the grid every day – and a new home added to the grid consumes much more electricity than an EV charging slowly overnight on the same outlet as your dryer… but you don’t hear anyone on FOX News yelling about how we should stop building new homes. The hoopty Leaf article is an intentionally extreme case and is certainly not the norm for the vast majority of EV owners. Sure, the charging infrastructure needs to be (and IS being) built out better and made more reliable every day (as Tesla’s already IS for the most part). EV’s are still very much in their infancy. It WILL get better on every front. Do you think there was a gas station on every corner when the Ford Model T came out? I’m sure there were plenty of curmudgeons like you back then whining about how people should keep riding horses. Thank goodness the majority of people back then embraced the new technology and we progressed as a species.
“new homes are being built at a record rate”
I suppose that’s true if you count homeless Joe pitching his shabby tent as a new home.
Nope… not at all. Actual new residential home construction. Well over a 1.4 MILLION in September alone. …but thanks for playing.
https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/newresconst.pdf
Well Homeless Joe will be happy to know there’ll be a home waiting for him once he manages to scrape up $$$,$$$ for a down payment and land a stable job with a six figure salary.
Till then it’s back to the tent by the river. Poor Joe can’t even afford a van 🙁
OK, so you’re one of “those guys” who only want to turn every conversation to politics (even when the subject at hand is not political) rather than add anything meaningful or substantive to the conversation. Got it. We really need a “Block” option on here.
You’re the one who brought up the enticing news of the record number of new homes being built. Homeless Joe simply wants to know when he’s going to be able to afford one.
His data isn’t even new homes. It’s new housing units. Which is vastly different than 1.4M HOUSES being built.
I noticed.
There’s still FAR more HOUSES being built than EV chargers being added to the grid. Sorry if that FACT makes you sad and disputes the lies being propagated on FOX news.
Dude, take a chill pill.
Great response. I guess that’s all you have to fall back on when you’ve been proven wrong.
We know why the government thinks they should exist, we just disagree that’s the role of the government and our tax dollars. You’re analogies are just logical fallacies. So, you’re just an electrification shill, right?
We didn’t subsidize Model T’s or filling stations. People NEED places to live, they don’t NEED new cars.
Sorry if the truth hurts your feelings. No, I’m not an EV shill. I currently drive a gas-guzzling Jeep LOL – but my next vehicle will likely be an EV – or at least a plug-in Hybrid. My analogy is solid. It’s true that we didn’t subsidize the Model T or filling station, but we sure did (and continue to) subsidize the crap out of oil – even as the oil companies were making massive record profits.
There is no truth to be had in discussing opinions of what and what not the government should subsidize. You didn’t “win,” there is no “winner” in an adult conversation. Your analogy is so solid you had to change the whole idea after I pointed out we didn’t subsidize ford or filling stations like we are having to subsidize EVs and EV charging infrastructure. We subsidize the petroleum industry which is a whole hell of a lot more than just gasoline; but that doesn’t mean we should keep doing shit like that. Soon enough Tesla will make record profits, the big three already make big profits. You seem to be against petroleum subsidy considering your tone, but you’re somehow for EV subsidy. Do you have any logical reasoning skills up there? No. That’s exemplified by you choosing to drive a Jeep.
Yes, as a matter of fact I DO posses some reasoning skills. I am against petroleum subsidies because that is a FULLY mature industry that is quite capable of surviving all on its own – which is exemplified in the ridiculously high profits they routinely rake in – and I don’t like the control they have over our gov’t/politicians. I don’t want to see a another single American killed in the middle-east sent over there primarily to support our oil interests (but I know there will be). I support EV subsidies to help jump-start that industry… speed up the development of the technology and get more people off of the oil tit (or at least allow us to be completely independent of foreign oil)… and of course, to support the PRIMARY goal of pumping less climate-changing pollution into our atmosphere.
Nice slam on my Jeep, BTW… but you can take that smug attitude and shove it. The 18 vehicle types I have bought so far in my life are wide and varied and include domestics and imports… sedans, hatchbacks, minivans, SUVs, small trucks, hybrids and several sports and muscle cars. I’ve always wanted to try a Jeep to compliment the off-road motorcycle riding I enjoy, so I did. I went into it with my eyes wide open – knowing full well about Jeep’s spotty reliability record. I’ve had it for a year and so far it’s been trouble-free and a lot of FUN. I will keep it at least as long as the factory warranty is in force and if it doesn’t give me much trouble during that time, possibly beyond. I’m really enjoying it – on-road and off – and it’s always handy to have a pickup around. Since I work from home 50% of the time, the lousy fuel mileage isn’t really a big concern. If they make a Gladiator 4xe PHEV (which I’m pretty sure they will) and the price isn’t too eye-watering (which I’m afraid it will be) I may trade my current one in for one of those.
So, in summary… EV incentives are good for everyone – whether they own an EV themselves or not. They’re sort of like having to pay school taxes even if YOU don’t have kids in school… because an educated population benefits all of us. If you want to continue driving ICE vehicles, that’s perfectly fine… despite the fear mongering on certain “news” networks, nobody is gonna force anyone into an EV, but we’ll all reap the benefits provided by those who do. Eventually we’ll ALL be driving EVs – but that will be decades from now.
I’m not reading all that. Good bye.
ROFL! Yeah, ReAdInG Is HaRd for some people. No worries… Bye now!
How about we also stop the $20 Billion that subsidized the fossil fuel industry from the American taxpayers? And zooming out a bit, some estimates put worldwide subsidies to fossil fuels around $7 TRILLION!
If you want to stop subsidizing, lets stop it all. But no, you’re going to cherry pick BEV subsidies because it’s easy and snarky.
Jesus, you EV fanatics are childish. Why would you assume that? Is this how you talk to people in real life? Combative and putting words in their mouth? Go back to jalopnik.
No, I am not for petroleum subsidy.
To her point about range, the UK does use WLTP so for the uninformed(like her) the range issue is legit. Those numbers are very optimistic. At least with the EPA range, most times you get into an EV with a full charge, the GoM shows that amount or more, unless you’ve been driving 80mph in the cold for your last few drives.
Concrete can structurally degrade at temperatures above 1500 degrees C. Regardless of all the speculation, you would think that the fire investigators could pinpoint what it was that caused temperatures this high.
You mean like the diesel truck fire that destroyed the I-95 overpass?
Just FYI, gasoline burns at above 3,000°F in air at sea level.
The concrete itself doesn’t need to hit the point of thermal degradation for the overall structure to suffer. Usually it’s two main mechanisms:
“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say… no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh… depended on the breaks.” …Gen Buck Tergidson
One of the worst things about this kind of fear-mongering is that it makes it harder to look at and address legitimate concerns without being lumped into this. Piling more batteries into massive SUVs to get enough range is a problem because of weight and inertia, but if you want to talk about that, you get these sorts who are going to jump in with the fire risk and thinking we need no EVs, and you get the folks defending EVs digging in their heels despite the fact that most of them would likely agree with the ideas of using fewer resources and improving driver/pedestrian safety.
Or how whenever someone says “I like/wish I could have (thing that existed in the past/was different in the past),” I see a dozen responses from cranky old conservatives trashing younger generations and pretending everything was wonderful back in their day, taking zero responsibility for the fact that things ended up this way largely due to their actions…
It’s frustrating trying to have reasonable conversations about a lot of things these days while trying to be objective about it, because so many topics are associated with radical viewpoints, and opposed by people who oppose said radical viewpoints with their own radical viewpoints, for no reason.
Heck I don’t even like EVs, but that’s just my opinion, and I also hate seeing them treated as a political/ideological issue. It’s tiring when I say I don’t like EVs and get responses from people ranting about “EV’s are a lie! Global warming is a myth and the left will take our blah blah blah!!!1!!” All I said was I don’t like them, I didn’t say I don’t believe they’re necessary or worth considering. After all, I don’t like going to the doctor’s office, but that doesn’t mean medicine is a scheme from whatever politician to take my freedom, or that it isn’t good for me regardless of what I think. We can talk about things while considering both pros and cons and how to improve them, can’t we?
IMHO the current EV battery tech is like the compact fluorescent light bulb. I think I’m gonna wait for the LEDs
I keep seeing news about solid-state batteries and the promises there, but I’ll take the interstitial lithium battery now. By the time I’m ready to change out cars solid-state might be mainstream, or maybe they’ll be gone because some clever person found an even better option.
Newspaper journalist of 20 years here: Opinion section should not exist. No one cares about your hot takes on anything, and we dont need you muddying the water between hard news and opinions. Most news consumers dont understand the firewall between the two. Same with newspaper endorsements of candidates. The moment someone says “oh, I dont read that paper, its conservative/liberal”, they obviously dont understand the divide. Same for cable news.
This has worsened in the digital age. At least in a print newspaper, they were on a page clearly labeled “opinion.” People don’t pay attention to a website where a sub-heading may classify it as an opinion piece.
Hear hear! I recently discovered https://ground.news/ It uses independent sources to rate stories as left, right or center and also gauges them on their level of factuality so you can choose what perspective you want to read (or read all of them). They don’t use any algorithms. You feed is based on your interests. Yes it takes a bit of work to set up and yes you need to pay a buck or so a month but it’s worth it, IMHO.
Its an odd concept, but even Fox News has some of the best journalists in the business in their news gathering side.. Look at their election night coverage. That was a battle of the personalities and the news folks. To be safe, turn off all TV and read your news.
More news consumers once understood the difference between the sections. Cable news muddied that and infected the papers, too. But more-so, it’s because we don’t teach media literacy in schools — a subject I once taught.
If it makes you feel better, I’m in a couple media literacy-related classes in college right now and have learned some useful information about finding and evaluating reliable sources and identifying biases.
It’s popular and valid to rag on the school system for sucking, but especially in the era of AI clickbait “news” articles, I have to hope that the school system will be overhauled enough to start teaching people how to find reliable information and take what they read with a grain of salt.
We live in weird times for sure, and sometimes I wonder if we adopted things like the internet too fast without considering what safeguards would be needed to prevent things from getting out of hand… Now we’re all playing with powerful tools we don’t fully understand, and it’s chaos.
News literacy and civics are both in dire need, glad to hear the literacy part is being tough!
Yes, but there is irony in putting this in the comments section of what is essentially an opinion website ????
This is *not* a news website, it’s entertainment. The concept of automotive journalism is akin to sports in my eyes. Yes, there are rules for covering a football game (no cheering from the pressbox is the cliche), but its not news. The comments section serves as a public forum of ideas. I see zero irony.
The point is all people really want to read is opinions. Facts need not apply and do not sell news-product.
The job of journalists isn’t to give people what they want, its to give them what they need. But yes, I take your point: people love opinions and arguing. Example: Facebook. The opinion section of a solid *news* organization does serve a purpose in that it opens up valuable discussion and debate, but at this point its to the detriment of journalism and is currently doing more harm than good.. so I say scrap it.
I’ll amend my previous point about automotive journalism being entertainment: I dont mean to discount the news stories and journalistic integrity of some car sites. There are newsy aspects to this genre, as is the case with the Hollywood Reporter or Sports Illustrated. They are news-adjacent and can be fact based, but are not in fact news but entertainment. There is overlap for sure.
So, by your definition, does an automotive news source for consumers even exist? Surely <insert your respected source here> can’t cover automotive news for consumer in an intelligent fashion. Auto Magazines have been bought and paid for by OEMs for decades.
I contend this site IS news. I think you’re trying to shoe-horn automotive consumer news into what the definition of day to day news is. And those are two different markets; day to day news is not covering things we as Americans MUST use. They report on happenings not on which thing you should consume. And when they do report on things we all need to consume, it’s just a paid endorsement from the maker of the thing.
Please read my follow up post where I elaborate, I think I was unfair in my quick, caffeine deprived assessment. Its gray area for sure, but I think we’re parsing words and getting lost in the definition as you said, between traditional day-to-day news and auto news. Sports is 100% entertainment, I’ll die on that hill. Yes, its also a business, and the biz of sports is important.. but under the biz category.
Since automotive news, as an industry, effects the greater economy, jobs, etc.. I guess there are absolutely overlaps between traditional news and the commentary of design, esthetics, and anything else too subjective to just report on. Its a very nuanced discussion, and things like the fact checking process and any publication’s journalistic standards would need to be questioned before I’d be comfortable calling any site a “news” site. It all comes down to the process in which facts are gathered and checked.
Of course even traditional legacy newspapers have an automotive section, for the reasons previously mentioned. One thing I’m certain of: Opinion sections of newspapers need to go.
Agreed 100%.
Thanks for the reply and conversation. We’re on the same wave length.
I remember when the firewall between news and opinion was, well, a firewall. The casual mixing of the two has been, in my (ahem) opinion, demonstrably disastrous.
That firewall between news and opinion has become very vague in the online news world and, I think, intentionally so. People end up getting their “news” from the opinion side and are happy to do so. It would seem better to have separate “Fox News” and “Fox Opinion” websites and streaming sources, so that no one could pretend otherwise. Same with the rest, of course – MSNBC, NYTimes, Post, etc. I do think opinion sections serve a purpose, but the divide needs to much be more clear. Of course, that might just mean that all of the news sources would collapse while the opinion ones thrive as too few people want to consume journalism vs. having their preconceived ideas parroted back at them.
I think the news side would thrive, people would place greater value to on less biased news. Fox News personalities defended themselves in court by saying they were only “entertainment” during the $787 million Dominion settlement. Everyone’s done with the clown show, we’re starved for trustworthy information, some people dont know where to find it and are led astray.
The Telegraph is the paper of record for puce-faced, swivel-eyed loons who think they’re too good for the Daily Mail (not that that’s any less of a shit-filled farrago of lies and bigotry, but because the Mail is what their wives read). Fuck them.
Are those considered newspapers in UK or more of a tabloid? The name comes from the shape of the paper, tabloid is a layout choice, but now its morphed into a synonym for a rag. I’m asking about the latter definition.
The mail was always tabloid size. The Telegraph used to be a broadsheet, but all the newspapers went either tabloid or that funny in-between format the German papers use about 15, 20 years ago. It was always a vile rag though, square footage notwithstanding.
“puce-faced, swivel-eyed loons”
Thank you for bolstering my insult vocabulary! I love this, especially “swivel-eyed”.
I don’t know why or how, but the UK has this unreasonable hatred for EVs right now and nothing they say makes sense. The most common arguments I’ve heard is everything you listed above.
The UK is the home of Lucas Electronics. That’s why.
Except that Bosch/Continental..etc are the suppliers of electrical systems in most cars now. Lucas doesn’t do much anymore in the industry anymore.
But Lucas has left a scar on the psyche of the British people that will take a couple of more generations to fully heal.
“The premise of this column is ridiculous; calling for a ‘stop’ to a whole technological development of cars because of some accidents and fires is not a serious thing to ask; it only serves to stir turds, vigorously.”
I am not going to give Allison Pearson credit for doing this intentionally. However, she has certainly demonstrated how absurd it is to ban and stop the technological development of cars using specific energy sources because of hysteria and scientific illiteracy.
If only many of the people criticizing her column had the self-awareness to realize their own hypocrisy.
Climate change is real?
It takes a massive amount of carbon to mine for lithium and manufacture an EV. EVs do not currently run on renewable energy almost anywhere, and EVs have huge weight that destroys roads (cement manufacture causes 8% of all carbon emissions). Zero net carbon biofuel initiatives are as plausible as making EVs better. Looking at multiple paths to reducing end-to-end carbon makes more sense than hysterical, politicized, scientifically illiterate bans on either side.
The weight penalty of an EV is trivial compared to a semi, especially a loaded semi. As such roadways built to handle semis should have no problem with EVs
Cool, let’s fix those things too. But we can agree that we have to move beyond fossil fuels
It takes a lot of carbon to mine lithium and manufacture EVs, but even that’s a lot less than the amount generated directly by an ICE car. It depends on the local power mix and driving patterns, but generally unless you set your car on fire every year or two and buy a new one a BEV will emit less CO2.
While they don’t run on 100% renewable energy almost anywhere, it’s at least partially renewable most places and at the very least moving away from coal almost everywhere the past few years.
The weight is a problem, sure, but for a passenger car it’s less of an issue than the move to half-ton and larger pickups as commuter vehicles and much, much less of an issue than semi trucks.
Net-zero-carbon biofuels are an interesting idea, but they’re essentially theoretical and at best a ridiculously inefficient way to turn solar into vehicle movement. They are of course still getting a lot of R&D put into them and might get used in cases that batteries don’t cover well (like long-haul flights), but it’s silly and disingenuous to pretend they’re a strictly better option than batteries in the future, much less today.
Apparently there’s been a concerted effort in (some) UK press to slander EVs that’s been going on for a year or so. The Fully Charged Show (UK-based YouTube channel about EVs and clean tech) has a video talking about it from some months ago. TeslaBjorn is a Norwegian YouTuber who just the other week had a video of his where he tests driving EVs until they run out of charge be portrayed completely different in The Sun.
If this is some conservative bullshit or if there’s money from oil companies involved is unknown but it’s fucking depressing having half the population root for the end of the world.
People who think they can stop – or even slow down – the EV revolution are utterly delusional.
> this whole shit-milkshake
Jason’s metaphors are always so poetic.
“There was none of the thick black smoke you would expect with a diesel fire.”
What about the thick, black smoke you would expect with a tire fire? Range Rovers have 4 or 5 tires, right? So where was THAT thick, black smoke?
The REAL cover-up is that it was a hovercraft…
hovercrafts have a large rubber skirt, so it couldn’t possibly be one of those either.
an ekranoplan perhaps?
ANTIGRAVITY.
Good point
I’ve got it! It was a sedan chair!
(looks down at large rubber skirt)
Whew, I’m safe!
My hovercraft is full of eels
Electric eels?
Helpful in England, as you’ll have a constant food supply.
I am deeply saddened at how few people got the joke.
My nipples explode with delight!
Great boobies, honeybunch.
It happens when you’re a Hungarian traveling abroad.
Drop your panties Sir Richard, I cannot wait til lunchtime!
If anyone’s actually worried about EV fires and interested in some educational reading, I highly recommend reading through this site. It explains the risks (toxic gases can build up in parking garages), recognition (popping/hissing followed by jets of flame), practical/proven firefighting strategies (water works, but if the vehicle is isolated and allowed to burn itself out instead, it will not reignite), and even infrastructure recommendations (consider fire hydrants at large charging stations).
Allison is not worried about EV fires. She’s angry that the world decided to change without her permission.
Damn, the keyboard must have been deep in spittle by the end of the article!
J/K – this was a well done and well deserved takedown.
Never liked reading auto-related articles outside of a site that specializes in auto articles, they’re usually shittely written and whoever wrote it dont know shit bout cars
Any editorial in the Telegraph is frothing idiocy written from the perspective of an absolute arse who cares about nothing but house prices in the home counties. Doesn’t matter what the subject is, their take will be laughably bad.
Honestly, doesn’t even require “in the Telegraph” there. Editorials and Opinion pieces are almost always trash, even in papers that generally have pretty good journalistic standards for their actual articles.
“Fuck off, Allison.”
+1
Cigarettes, Climate Change, Vaccines, and now EVs…just a long line of corporate/political propaganda fighting the innevitable because someone’s paycheck depends on holding us back from progress.
Honestly with the way that British written “news” has been since the late 1970s, this doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve seen high profile article in British publications opposing everything from refurbishing a train yard to replacing the bulbs in the streetlights (yes, that was real, in 2013 London announced that all streetlights would be changed to LED starting in 2015 and a whole raft of Tories and their cohorts screamed it was the death of London’s nighttime visage).
What surprises me is this person probably wrote this on a laptop or a tablet that uses a much much less stable lithium-ion pack. Small battery devices are much more likely to have catastrophic failures because it’s not considered cost-efficient nor space-efficient to put in battery ducting to prevent thermal expansion and thermal runaway. In other words, if you hit one with a hammer your phone’s more likely to kill you than your electric car (Galaxy Note 7 anybody?) and yet she says nothing about that.
yeah she’s a fearmongering troll that belongs on Yahoo News, but we should have more NiMH battery electric cars. They cost less and possibly less risk of fire.
Also, why do EV charging station “pumps” face down rather than up? The design they use gives water a chance to pool, unless they have drain holes. I haven’t been to one up close because I don’t have an EV, and I’m not one of those trolls that goes “icing” the charging stations.
Maybe a roof over them would help, too.
As someone who hates batteries with a passion I concur that this is fearmongering crap. I do everything in my power to buy things that do not require batteries to operate (within reason, I still have a cell phone) yet as far as new cars go I still plan on buying several BEVs. With all the crap modern ICE vehicles are reliant on to run and pass emissions if you want a simple car you have to buy a BEV.
While BEV fires are an issue really any fire in any modern car will total it, that’s just how it goes.