Keith Bryer’s opinion that “electric cars [are] not as clean as Greens like to think” (Business Report, October 8) is very conservative and boxed in. Ironically it is he who is patently and wilfully failing to think things through.
Thinkers of his ilk hold back innovation because of a failure to understand that we are at the threshold of a process and every step forward is going to bring us closer to the transport solution we need.
Electric cars for city travel do not have to be very heavy and as anyone who has eyes to penetrate morning and afternoon traffic will have detected, a majority of cars carry no passengers. Neither will an electric car for city travel have to be laden every day with half a year’s supply of groceries to weigh it down. For the city dweller seeking to get to work and back home in his or her own time, a light-framed electric car is the answer.
For me the electric car will be a big advantage because I have spare energy from my twelve photovoltaic panels. Therefore charging up the batteries to accommodate about 30km to 40km of travel a day will need no dirty coal-fired electricity which I think Bryer is using daily to cook his meals, cool his office and light his home.
With climate change wreaking havoc on a scale never before witnessed in human history, in every corner of the world, Bryer the environmental “bittereinder” will be better served to demand greater technological advances for the electric car so that the present shortcomings are addressed and the electric car can indeed become the ultimate green car of our time.
With nearly a billion cars on the road on the planet and a billion more arriving soon, we need to move forward and we need to do so fast and furiously.
Those of us who have seen the future know that the future is the Mark 3 of electric cars that will dominate our cities within a decade.
Farouk Cassim
Cape Town