Good day my good friend.
It has been a long and intense week this week. So you will forgive me for not going on in this introduction today. Maybe some learning here on not trying to have 3 reports that need writing in the same week, and 80 abstracts to review for a conference.
My perfect “brain switch off” activities are to work in my garden and play video games. As I write this, I will be putting up a fence to stop the dogs from crawling under the bushes, before later trying to make some headway in The Last of Us Part 2. A very good day indeed.
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💷 To invest or not to invest?
Today (Thursday as I write this), I was party to a discussion that I have long heard over the last 10 years, and it never seems to go away. Why on Earth are we investing taxpayers money in electric vehicle charging infrastructure, when batteries are coming online to make such investment obsolete.
In the UK, electric vehicle charging points have been growing at a rather stupid rate. The number of publicly available charging points grew by 46% between January 2023 and January 2024, up to over 55,000 charging points. Meanwhile, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders the average range of a new electric vehicle on a full charge is around 300 miles. Though obviously this varies based on factors like weather and driving style.
So we are in a position in the UK where both the number of charging points has radically increased, as has the average range of a new electric vehicle. We may be at a point where you could charge your vehicle at home overnight, and drive from London to Cornwall on a single charge.
So are we at risk of paying for new infrastructure to support charging of vehicles, which would shortly be obsolete?
Honestly, I am not sure. There is a very real risk of this happening, but we are uncertain as to how electric vehicles will change our driving habits, and whether we will need electric vehicle charging points purely to overcome the issue of range anxiety. In Norway, the nation with the highest take up of electric vehicles, charging infrastructure is ubiquitous in public spaces and at home, and that was developed when the range of electric vehicles was more limited.
In this situation, I cannot help but think back to the history of the adoption of current cars. We often forget that while the motor car really started to affect where we live in the early 20th Century, ownership was not common until at least the 1950s.
In those early days, there were no petrol stations in every town and village in the land. So how did people fill up their cars? If we look at history, there was no one way by which their cars were filled up.
To go back to 1904, AB Filson Young wrote of the situation in his book “The Complete Motorist”:
Petrol and paraffin oil should be kept in a separate building; the roughest little cabin will do as long as it is thoroughly ventilated; but these stores should on no account be kept in any building adjoining either motor-house, stables, harness-room, or the living quarters of the servants…
If petrol is stored in the ordinary two-gallon tins, any rough outhouse that can be locked up will serve the purpose; but if it is desired to store petrol in bulk, special tanks will have to be constructed and a special licence obtained…
This citation paints an interesting picture. Not only of driving being a hobby of the rich, but of filling up your car at home. So long as you were able to obtain petrol or paraffin oil (usually from a chemist) and store it safely, you filled up the car before you left the house.
And the chemist was really the only place at the time where you could source petrol. Bertha Benz, in the very first example of a cross-country car journey that we know of, drove a car with a 4.5 litre fuel capacity. This necessitated what could be argued as the first stop to refuel a car:
With no fuel tank and only a 4.5-litre supply of petrol in the carburetor, she had to find ligroin, the petroleum solvent needed for the car to run. The solvent was only available at apothecary shops, so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel.
This further points to another thing that is often overlooked. Petrol was not easy to come by, and so people often just used any solvent or petroleum-based compound that there was to hand. Bertha Benz used ligroin, which whilst refined from petroleum is actually a cleanser.
Meanwhile, the famous Ford Model T could effectively be run on anything petroleum-based that was combustible. Known fuels used include distilled ethanol (used in disinfectant and lamps), kerosene (another common fuel for lamps), and benzene (used at the time as a cleaning fluid).
By the 1910s and 1920s, petrol filling stations were becoming more and more common place. We know that by 1914, Russia had 440 filling stations, and there are filling stations in the USA that were opened before 1910. So while by no-means ubiquitous (and the chemists were still used for a while yet), the modern petrol station was beginning to make an appearance.
What this history lesson tells me is this. If electric vehicles are to be common place, it is likely that in 50 years time the way that we charge them will look radically different to now. Lots of solutions will be tried, most will fail, and it is likely that one will scale up and become the dominant way by which we charge vehicles in the future.
And that is ok. That is the nature of the change that will take place, because technological change happens this way. Indeed you can argue that using money to experiment on many solutions that won’t work is a necessary step to change things for the better. Perhaps in an uncertain future, spreading your bets is a good thing.
What you can do now: If there is an opportunity to experiment with new types of charging infrastructure or have funding to install new infrastructure, take it. Especially if you are in a local council and you will get subsidy to pay for it. If you are in the UK, look out for opportunities for funding from OZEV and UKRI to do just this.
👩🎓 From academia
The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author – they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.
Last-Mile logistics with on-premises parcel Lockers: Who are the real Beneficiaries?
TL:DR – Amazon saves money every time you use a locker.
The environmental impact of buying groceries online/offline pre and during COVID-19. Any changes?
TL:DR – More online deliveries of groceries is good for the climate.
JUE insight: Ticket to paradise? The effect of a public transport subsidy on air quality
TL:DR – Making it cheaper to use public transport reduces air pollution.
TL:DR – It depends on the situation, but generally subsidising consumers is better.
📺 On the (You)Tube
Believe it or not, we could have had electric cars 100 years ago! This episode of The Fully Charged Show explores why they failed, and the lessons learned from that failure.
🖼 Graphic Design
Source: Transport for London
I couldn’t put in anything else, really. This is the new map of the Overground network in London, with the lines renamed and recoloured. And it looks great. I also happen to love the names. I recommend downloading the new Tube Map and Map of the Overground Lines.
📚 Random things
These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.
- Environmental DNA Is Everywhere. Scientists Are Gathering It All (Undark)
- Recession reality hits major economies (Axios)
- Employment’s Hidden Figures (City Journal)
- Are economists selfish? Not according to Monopoly (Undercover Economist)
- The EU didn’t foresee autocratisation in Central and Eastern Europe – neither did political science (The Loop_)
📰 The bottom of the news
Naturally, with the new names of the Overground lines touching somewhat on politics with names like Windrush and Suffragette, the permenantly angry and permanently online got mad about it all. So I just wanted to share this example (from the site-that-shall-not-be-named) of Scottish Comedian Frankie Boyle taking one of them down from the top rope.
Never change, Frankie. Never change.
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