“If you are not selling combustion engines, someone else will.” A rare moment of common sense in the form of a recent utterance from the boss of BMW, Oliver Zipse. Most people in his position feel compelled to talk only of an all-electric future and they fear the consequences of suggesting anything else. Because politicians and many young people who live in large cities have decided being able to cover distances using an engine is the worst thing a human can do. As they cluck over coffee freshly shipped from Ethiopia.
It’s the certainty of the electro-zealots I find so distasteful, and the fact they think they have a moral superiority. Unhelpfully for them, public opinion on future mobility in the UK has been shaped by politicians, Twitter bullies and, to an extent that I find genuinely scary, the education system. This is 50-year scenario planning by Wikipedia. The first two are easily understood and visible. Cancel culture now means that on most social media you cannot defend the internal combustion engine or suggest a single cyclist in the history of cycling has ever done anything wrong.