Are EVs THE future? Why should we restrict ourselves to only seeking one particular approach?
The current crop of BEVs are clearly not a perfect solution, although they fit some use cases extremely well indeed - urban dwellers in countries with large amounts of energy generation from low-carbon sources who are able to charge at home and do not need frequent high mileages for example. Their main focus at the moment seems to be to help persuade people to move away from traditional ICE vehicles by giving them stuff which is as much like them as possible. There's enormous amounts of scope for developing personal electric vehicles that do not require them to be 4000kg SUVs.
But that's the excellent thing about the future - we don't have to confine ourselves to one single approach, we can develop a range of different technologies each of which will fit different use cases - Bamford's hydrogen fuelled engine for site equipment for example.
Our Mini SE is absolutely perfect for our needs, it's nice to drive, fast enough, charged from either our solar panels or cheap rate electricity, it needs practically no servicing and costs less than 2p a mile to run, but it's still a bit 'boring traditional 20th century' in its conception. I'd really like to see some more imaginative transport solutions - things like Aptera for example.
