Episode 96: Liz Allan and Colin Walker - Misinformation, Economic Impact, and Infrastructure Challenges

Episode 96: Liz Allan and Colin Walker - Misinformation, Economic Impact, and Infrastructure Challenges.

Liz Allan speaks to Colin Walker, the head of transport at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. Colin makes a compelling case for transitioning to EVs, comparing it to the historic shift from horses and carts to motorcars. He discusses the economic benefits, the importance of retraining in the car industry, and the critical need for government action to combat misinformation and accelerate charging infrastructure rollout. Together, they talk about the pressing issues of battery health and the changing dynamics in the car market. Colin provides actionable insights on building consumer confidence, advocating for certification schemes for secondhand EV batteries, and the importance of drawing from the experiences of actual EV drivers. They also explore how misinformation and media bias influence public perception and policy, and how plans for zero-emission mandates could shape the future. 

Colin Walker Bio:
Colin Walker is a dedicated policy advocacy campaigner whose career has been marked by a commitment to improving the world through impactful work. While at Which, one of his significant contributions included advocating for the traffic light labelling scheme to help address the UK's obesity crisis. This scheme aimed to simplify food labelling, making it easier for consumers to understand the nutritional content of their food at a glance. Colin's current focus is on electric vehicles (EVs) and the necessity to decarbonise the transport sector. His career reflects his unwavering dedication to creating positive change through strategic policy advocacy.

Colin Walker Links:
Website: http://www.eciu.net
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-walker-1a55a084
Twitter: https://x.com/colinwalker79

Episode Keywords:
Electric vehicles, EV transition, economic benefits of EVs, car industry retraining, global automotive competitiveness, public charging infrastructure, EV battery lifespan, resale value of EV batteries, dealership support for EVs, EV misinformation, secondhand EV market, battery health certification, government intervention for EVs, decarbonising transport, climate change, second hand EV affordability, consumer confidence in EVs, fleet vehicles impact, media influence on EV perception, retraining car mechanics, misinformation about EVs, EV incentives, political influence on EV adoption, charging infrastructure rollout.

Episode Hashtags:
#ElectricEvolutionPodcast, #EVTransition, #GreenTransport, #ElectricVehicles
#EVBenefits, #EVMisinformation, #EVInfrastructure, #SustainableTransport
#ClimateAction, #DecarboniseTransport, #ElectricFleet, #BatteryHealth
#CleanEnergyFuture, #FutureOfMobility, #PolicyAdvocacy, #EVInnovation, #SecondhandEVs, #EVConsumerConfidence

Transcript

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Liz Allan  [00:00:01]:

K. So on today's episode, I have got Colin Walker, and he is the head of transport at the energy and climate intelligence unit. We met last week, Colin. So it's lovely to see you again.

Colin Walker [00:00:12]:

Pleasure. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me on.

Liz Allan  [00:00:15]:

Thank you for joining. So just to give a little bit of your backstory. So you worked for British Cycling previously, but you've worked in the charity sector for quite a while, haven't you? So and I and I saw on some information about you, which was you'd rolled out the traffic light system for food choices, which I found was really interest I always love digging into a little bit of people's back stories. So do you wanna just give us a little bit of background and, you know, kind of fill those gaps in?

Colin Walker [00:00:43]:

Sure. Yeah. I guess I left uni just trying to figure out what to do. Kind of always without sounding cheesy, I wanted to do something in which I help felt I was helping make the world slightly better through the work that I was doing, and kind of found myself working in the in the world of policy advocacy campaigning. And that took me to different organisations like the British Library, the mental health charity Minds, the consumer organisation WITCH, Savor Children, War Child, to name a few. And, yeah, the the each of these organizations is kind of, like, campaigning primarily for governments to introduce policies that would kind of, like, help benefit a particular group within either Britain or globally. So whilst I wasn't responsible as maybe for actually rolling out the traffic light label scheme, it's certainly something when I was at which we campaigned for, recognising that we faced a bit of an an obesity crisis in the UK, and a lot of that was driven by the food that we ate. And a lot of that was down to the fact that people weren't it was difficult for people to understand what was in their food, and we really wanted to see a simple traffic light labeling scheme that very quickly allowed people to kind of get a sense of the relative healthiness or unhealthiness of the food that they were buying.

Colin Walker [00:01:48]:

As you can imagine, we came up against a lot of resistance, particularly from food industry who didn't maybe want the incredibly high content of salt, sugar, and fat in the foods they were selling us to be so well known. The strength of that lobby was huge, but, you know, getting there was quite a success. So that's been good fun.

Liz Allan  [00:02:06]:

I was gonna say for something like that, it is I can imagine that there was there was a lot of resistance. I I worked, for a while kind of in in the food industry. So and I know I know exactly what was going on. I was actually, for for quite a while, I was a judge on the Free From Food Awards and and we kind of we'd get things coming through, you know, and you'd get home sort of quite small companies coming through where with with really small amounts of ingredients on the, you know, on the information. But then you get, like, mass production companies, and there'd be this whole raft of ingredients on there. It was just ridiculous. We were like, why do you need all of these things in these foods? You know? So so so I told I totally get it. But you you moved into, British Cycling as well, didn't you?

Colin Walker [00:02:57]:

I took a I took a bit of a career break went and lived abroad for a few months and then came back and my main hobby is cycling. And then I saw a job that was available there and it was a wonderful opportunity to actually work at an organization that kind of runs the sport that you love. So, yeah, we're there for a time as a kind of, like, the lead for London and Central England. And, yeah, like, an awful lot of the work we're doing is trying to encourage cycling uptake. I was particularly interested in the you know, how shifting people onto bikes and away from, you know, petrol and diesel cars is one of the means by which you can help reduce our c o two emissions.

Liz Allan  [00:03:37]:

Yes. It's first

Colin Walker [00:03:38]:

to say I wasn't particularly happy when British Cycling then decided to take sponsorship from Shell.

Liz Allan  [00:03:43]:

Oh, god.

Colin Walker [00:03:45]:

So, that kind of conflicted a little bit with those values. Yeah. I mean, that decision was made after I left, but I'd heard rumors doing the rounds and it was happening. So I was I felt a bit uncomfortable, and I'd always wanted to get into the climate change space. So, yeah, this opportunity at the CRU came up, and I kind of grasped it with both hands and rest is history, really.

Liz Allan  [00:04:06]:

So come on. So tell us a little bit about what the so the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit

Colin Walker [00:04:12]:

Quite grand, isn't We

Liz Allan  [00:04:14]:

just sound like you kind of, you know, kind of men in black kind of thing.

Colin Walker [00:04:18]:

As you can tell, don't necessarily fit that kind of kind of black profile. I I

Liz Allan  [00:04:23]:

don't know. I don't know.

Colin Walker [00:04:25]:

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a grandiose name, or ECIU for short, that makes it easier. But we've existed since 2014, and it was largely set up, out of recognition that, well, obviously, a huge number of changes and technological innovations were gonna be need to be rolled out as UK may move to net 0.

Liz Allan  [00:04:45]:

Mhmm.

Colin Walker [00:04:45]:

And that there's gonna be like there always is with any kind of major technological shift, an awful lot of misinformation said. And we were concerned that a lot of our political leaders who ultimately determine how we're gonna get to net zero would be influenced by the stuff they read in the press and a lot of stuff they read in the press, which is not a fair representation of the facts. So that's why we established ourselves. Then the transport program was created that that I was recruited to set up, yeah, just about 18 months ago. Recognition that transport was becoming increasingly marred by misinformation. And whilst I am head of transport, and that's obviously a big brief, 90 odd percent of my work is looking at EVs because that's where for two reasons, really. 1, decarbonizing our private cars is the most important thing we need to do within transport. I mean, it's worth remembering that people forget this because so much attention is paid to the com to the conversations happening around solar panels and offshore wind farms, etcetera.

Colin Walker [00:05:50]:

The the single biggest sector in terms of CO 2 emissions is transport.

Liz Allan  [00:05:53]:

Yeah. And

Colin Walker [00:05:54]:

whilst the power sector in the UK actually has done pretty well in terms of decarbonizing. I mean, we we produce nowhere near the CO 2 we did 20 years ago, and the move, the complete ditching of coal, and the kind of sudden increase in, like, offshore wind is, you know, is a success. Yes. Transport has kind of plateaued. Any efficiencies we saw in, like, the technological innovation within internal combustion engines has been wiped out by we're all driving much heavier cars. So we we we have to do something about that sector, and you cannot do anything about decarbonizing that sector if you don't focus on cars, which are responsible for over, like, half the emissions of transport in the UK producers. And yeah. So that was the main reason why we felt it was a priority, and we, as an organization, were just seeing the level of misinformation doing the rounds by EVs.

Colin Walker [00:06:43]:

And it was becoming it's and it still is prevalent. It's how an awful lot of our press is kind of leans towards reporting the misinformation rather than the facts. And that has a real problem in terms of undermining consumer confidence in making moves to EVs, but also just an awful lot of our politicians are just influenced by what they're reading and have got themselves the wrong idea about the realities of EV transition. And sometimes they have to vote on important stuff like the introduction of a zero emission vehicle mandate. You know, we were really concerned that they were gonna vote. How they were gonna vote was gonna be informed by the stuff they're reading in the press. So that's what we exist to do is try to get the the actual facts in there or counteract the stuff that it just quite simply

Liz Allan  [00:07:31]:

just just mind boggling the number of the number of things things that you you actually hear that are negative coming from press. So no no no wonder people, like you say, if you I hadn't thought about it that way. I suppose I suppose my thinking was and I don't know whether other people thought like this that that they would have you know, because they have advisers, don't they? But the so we're saying that none of these know because they're all they're all just listening to the press.

Colin Walker [00:08:02]:

Well, I imagine if you're a politician or an adviser working in the office, you are bombarded by so many sources of information. And there's been an awful lot of success that those who have a vested interest in maybe trying to slow the transition down, kind of like confusing the picture and putting stats out there that contradict what the actual evidence tells us or what the scientific community is telling us. And so sometimes those who shout the loudest get heard the best. Yeah. And, and there's so many other different factors that are kind of driving forward, but I think an awful lot of it is just which you see every time there's a kind of a shift to a new technology, just this innate resistance or fear of change. You know, the Daily Mail ran the campaign to save our incandescent light bulbs. Remember them? The burns like 300 watts of bulb, and now we're burning LED watts that are just as good that use barely 5. Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:08:52]:

It's literally a front page Daily Mail campaign to save our incandescent light bulbs. The the same newspaper once predicted that the Internet would never catch on. There there's a columnist, I can't remember his name, who often writes in the Telegraph having a go at EVs, who once famously predicted that he didn't think the iPhone would ever become anything more than a niche product. So these people are consistently proven to be wrong, but that the same dynamic happens every time that there's a technological move. You know, there are lots of scare stories said about cars when they're first invented, presumably by the horse lobby. You know? It's

Liz Allan  [00:09:25]:

Of course. Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:09:26]:

Same things were said about trains by the and it was spread by the owners of canals because their business model was threatened by this new technological innovation. So it's just history repeating itself. And I am confident that it won't be enough to do well over transition. I think the technology is too good and the benefits are too obvious, particularly for those who actually make the move and then experience them. I think my main concern is the pace at which at which a transition will happen could be significantly slowed by obvious disinformation. And, you know, the slower it goes, 2 consequences of that. All the money you can save by owning an EV, that's lost to people if they stay with their diesel and petrol cars for longer. And, obviously, they will just keep producing c o 2, and we're in the middle of a climate crisis.

Colin Walker [00:10:11]:

Yeah. We're really gonna we're really off target to to hit the 1.5 that everyone says we need to do to avoid kind of really catastrophic effects. So slowing down is is a really problematic thing. So, yeah, that's my concern.

Liz Allan  [00:10:25]:

It kind of makes you think it makes you wonder what do people actually want. Do they want to be proven to be wrong? You know, because it it's kind of I I know we've I've said this before about the best vested interest about oil and gas, you know, and I'll say I'll say it again. We can talk about that. But, you know, it just feels like that at some point, all of these people, like you like you kind of said about the the Daily Mail writer or the Telegraph writer, you know, prove they why are they doing this just to be proven wrong at some point and made to be looked like a bit of a twit? Mhmm.

Colin Walker [00:11:04]:

Good question. Do

Liz Allan  [00:11:04]:

they believe it? Do they do they believe it themselves?

Colin Walker [00:11:07]:

I I unfortunately, I can't get inside their heads. All I can do is speculate. I'd love to, but I don't know. Because I keep on looking at going, you know, all these things you're saying, first, you're not born by this fact, so you kind of make yourself look a bit silly. But b, particularly nowadays with social media, there's gonna be a written record of you being wrong. Yeah. I just don't I I think an awful lot of them were convinced that they're right. So I just don't countenance that idea that one day they're gonna prove that they were on the wrong side of history and that all the fear mongering they spread was just complete nonsense.

Colin Walker [00:11:40]:

I also think some will claim that all their work that they did to flag their concerns about the transition. So what we'll do is, look, what we'll do is we'll get there. Everyone will be driving EVs and all the kind of, like, terrifying things that people said that our car parks will collapse. Everyone will be spontaneously bursting into flame. We'll all be stranded in, like, snow drifts because of all that snow we have in the UK, as EVs can't handle snow.

Liz Allan  [00:12:04]:

No. What to the

Colin Walker [00:12:05]:

things we've proven to be wrong. But I think they'll claim yeah. But the reason it worked is because we raised the concerns at the time, and they were subsequently addressed. So we helped influence the move.

Liz Allan  [00:12:15]:

Oh, gosh.

Colin Walker [00:12:16]:

Okay? But I'm like, no. No. But they will try. But this this is an important issue because some of the concerns that people have are completely genuine. They're completely fair. There are you know, no transition to a new technology is perfect. There's definitely gonna be, like, kind of bumps along the way.

Liz Allan  [00:12:32]:

Yeah. You

Colin Walker [00:12:32]:

know? Our charging infrastructure is not where it will need to be. Unsurprising. You don't just suddenly go from 0 to a 100 in terms of going. You don't just randomly go, bang. There you go. UK, that's the infrastructure you need. It gets developed over time. And, yes, if we don't carry on building it and build them in the right places, we will have a problem.

Colin Walker [00:12:51]:

And I do think newspapers that flag these concerns can use their influence to actually shape government policy to get them to be a bit better at installing infrastructure that we need. So I think that stuff's kind of fair. I think I think there's a real problem we're facing in the EVs are spectacularly cheap to run if you have a driveway, which and this blows people's minds. They get very angry with me on Twitter. I point out that 60 to 70% of UK households have private or street parking. Like, no. They're not. They're like, they do.

Colin Walker [00:13:20]:

So the majority of people can run EVs very cheaply, but that leaves a sizable minority that can't. Yeah. And it's just not and particularly since on the whole, it's a sweeping generalization, but on the whole, people in poorer households live in households, in houses without driveways. Right? Yeah. On the whole. I mean, in London, when a terraced house costs 1 a half 1000000, £2,000,000, you mean a different on the whole, that's the case. And if you can't charge your car at home cheaply on a Octopus nighttime EV charging tariff, and you have to rely on public charging, You have to pay a lot more to fuel your EV.

Liz Allan  [00:13:55]:

We do. We do.

Colin Walker [00:13:56]:

And that seems unfair. That's saying poorer people have to pay more to run an EV than richer people. Now that is completely unreasonable. So, again, that's an example of a challenge that is fair that the I would much rather see the papers use their influence to try to help push government to resolve those challenges. Well, at the moment, I feel that they're too focused on spreading nonsense that just quite simply isn't true. Cars burst on fire. Car parks will collapse. Blah blah blah.

Colin Walker [00:14:25]:

But, also, they have this really slightly frustrate slightly frustrating, understating, frustrating mindset, which is there is this problem with the EV transition. And rather than think, wait. What can we do? How can we pressure government to fix it? They go to, let's call the whole thing off. It's not perfect. Let's call the whole thing off. Yeah. And that mindset is infuriating.

Liz Allan  [00:14:46]:

But that, to me, is about those negative clicks because as a society and I don't know whether this is worldwide or whether it's just the UK we quite like a bit of negative stuff don't we do you know what I mean and and you know positive word-of-mouth, transfers slower than negative word-of-mouth. If you go to a restaurant and that restaurant's a bit crap, you're more likely to tell your mates that the restaurant's a bit crap and don't go there. Do you know what I mean? And and it's it's kind of like that, isn't it really? It's sort of like, let's keep it negative.

Colin Walker [00:15:19]:

There's a phrase I'm gonna completely butcher. It's something like a lie travels around the world before retriever's got his boots on or some there's some like that. No. It's it's like yeah. You're right. And at that point, it's the fact that that's difficult given a lot of my work is about trying to get stuff placed in the press. Yeah. Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:15:39]:

It's hard because the story I'm trying to sell is a the the truth. The reality about EVs and EV ownership is a good news story. It's they don't set on fire. Car parks don't collapse under them. They are much cheaper to run. They are much better for the environment. And, like, newspapers are like, yeah. But I really wanna sell a story that says that this EV went out of control and had be stopped by the police a 130 miles an hour.

Colin Walker [00:16:03]:

Oh, you mean the one where the driver was subsequently arrested for dangerous driving? That one. Okay. But, it's it's that's what they wanna sell. So that's it's much easier for those trying to slow the EV transition by spreading negative bad news about EVs. Very easy to pitch that because you say awful lot of people naturally want to read those stories. I I also think there's a whole thing about confirmation bias. An awful lot of people, because of this general anxiety about change, want to believe that EVs are rubbish and will read newspapers that confirm that prejudice they have against them. So if if we know, like, you know, so many papers like The Sun, The Mail, The Telegraph, The Times will print these stories because it's something they know a lot of their readership on.

Colin Walker [00:16:52]:

Yeah. So that's a hard loop to break. Then I think one of the key breaks, the one thing that I think will trump the misinformation that people are seeing on social media, which we haven't even spoken about, you know, YouTube and TikTok as a source of this stuff is a whole other problem. But they see in the press, I think I'll get trumped when they start. More and more people have a close friend or family member that has an EV that says, ignore that nonsense you're eating. Absolutely. It's fine. It's so bad in the car I had before.

Colin Walker [00:17:20]:

And I say that because I there's plenty of surveys that show that 90% of people who've got an EV would never go back to petrol or diesel. I'm confident that that mechanism is probably the thing that will drive more and more people to get EVs. It's like in the early days when someone got an iPhone, And more and more had them, more and more people then wanted them. You know?

Liz Allan  [00:17:38]:

Exactly that. And and and at the moment, we've got 1,000,000 drivers. Yeah. And it might not sound a lot because how many people we've got in the in the UK is

Colin Walker [00:17:46]:

That's 60 odd 1,000,000. 65,000,000. 60 I mean, we've got 40 odd 1000000 vehicles in the road, I think.

Liz Allan  [00:17:51]:

But if you think about it, if you've got 1,000,000 drivers driving EVs, they've all got family and friends. So there's gonna be more than 1,000,000 people that think, you know, actually, this is alright. So at some point, I suppose that it's it is that tipping point. It's the tipping tipping point towards positivity rather than negativity, isn't it?

Colin Walker [00:18:11]:

We did a survey about yeah. We did some polling last year and found that other people we polled, 52% knew a close friend or family member that had an EV.

Liz Allan  [00:18:21]:

And that's good.

Colin Walker [00:18:22]:

Yeah. So it felt like quite a significant moment that we tipped over. More people know someone who have an EV than people that don't. And, you know, we asked them, you know, have these people what what have they said they like their EV? And, yeah, the so, like, the the vast majority of them, the people they spoke to about their EV said, yeah, these things are great. So that that tipping point has happened, but let's also not be we've got to acknowledge the fact that the rate of growth of new EV sales is slowing. It's a lot of people deliberately misinterpret and go EV sales are stalling or EV sales are going down or not. They're still going up, but they're not going up as fast. And actually, it's a share of overall new market sales.

Colin Walker [00:19:02]:

They have gone down a little bit. So there's still something happening there that we need to understand a little better. I personally believe a lot of the misinformation that I'm having to address is responsible for undermining consumer confidence. But so there's still something that that knowing people who've got an EV still hasn't fixed everyone's anxiety. So there's still more to do.

Liz Allan  [00:19:21]:

But do you think so and and and we may maybe I'm wrong. So the push to get this the EV sales out at year end, usually end of December, is you know? So so in some ways, maybe there was a spike. I don't maybe I'm totally wrong here. There tends to sometimes be like a spike at the end year end, doesn't there? And then it drops off because everybody's pushing for sales because they know it's their year end. Push push push push. So then when it gets to January or between the Q1, maybe that's why because actually oh, we can take the foot off the gas a little bit.

Colin Walker [00:19:58]:

Excuse me. Excuse me.

Liz Allan  [00:19:59]:

Excuse me.

Colin Walker [00:20:01]:

I hope so. Maybe I'm not as positive because, what EVs as a sale as a proportion of new car sales in 2022 was 16.6%. 2023, that went down by a fraction to 16.5%. Mhmm. And in 24 so far, they were 15%.

Liz Allan  [00:20:20]:

Okay.

Colin Walker [00:20:20]:

They need to be at 22% in 22. Yeah. The government's demand that came into force at the beginning of the year. I so I think there's there's another dynamic going on. I think consumer confidence has been hit by the consumer's information by government flip flopping on this when the Yeah. When they had introduced the 2030 phase update for us things and then part of conferences last year, Rishi Sunak then pushed it back to 2035. The Office of Budget Responsibility and AutoTrader have both said that has impacted consumer confidence. People feel they've got a bit longer to make the transition, so that has slowed things down, and that has not helped.

Colin Walker [00:20:57]:

I mean, manufacturers are trying to push them.

Liz Allan  [00:20:59]:

There's a

Colin Walker [00:20:59]:

lot more adverts for EVs out there now. Yeah. I went and had a look at an EV 6 a couple of weekends ago, and they were talking about offering, like, £4,000 to the deposit. If you got in a PCP deal, it was quite generous. I think and they made the point we've got to get these things out the door because of this government target. So there's definitely a push. I also think this is all coincided with every time you have a technological kind of innovation, you have this bell curve of which people adopt them. Right? And the first cohort of people to get them, the early adopters.

Colin Walker [00:21:34]:

And I think the early adopters have adopted, and so we're now having to transition to the next group, the early mainstream. And that always results in a slowing because there's a bit of a leap because those people are maybe a little more hesitant, a little more skeptical, than those people that went first. So that's that's I think that's where we are now is making that leap to that next big group. And typically, what you'll see with any other technological innovation, once you make that leap and people in that group start buying them, the pace accelerates again. And that will coincide with auto trader have said we're pretty much at price parity on secondhand EVs compared to their petrol equivalent. So that idea that the upfront cost is a barrier has kind of gone a little bit because most people buy their cars in the secondhand market, and the EV secondhand EVs are no more expensive to buy than their petrol equivalents. But I also think we'll see hopefully, we're gonna start seeing these cheaper models like the Dacia Spring, the Renault 5.

Liz Allan  [00:22:33]:

Yes.

Colin Walker [00:22:34]:

That's Tesla actually introduced a new model for the first time in a long time and actually introduced a model that large numbers of people actually want rather than the Cybertruck truck, which is a purpose of the truck, which is

Liz Allan  [00:22:46]:

Yeah. It's a bit ridiculous looking, isn't it?

Colin Walker [00:22:49]:

But it were to be honest, I'm very it's a huge vehicle, a huge amount of resources would seem ridiculous on British roads. I don't think again, British roads because of safety standards here. I still don't see how. But I think in the in the US where the pickup truck is king and where drivers of pickup trucks like it to be the people of society are probably particularly skeptical of electric vehicles, I think that's the kind of vehicle you need to kind of port them over. Mhmm. Tesla, I think, in a lot of its other markets needs to introduce this £25,000 budget EV. It could make a real difference. So we're beginning to see those models coming.

Colin Walker [00:23:21]:

Hopefully, that will have an impact on uptake as well.

Liz Allan  [00:23:24]:

Yeah. I hope so. And and, actually, I don't know whether you know. So we we bought our our EV was used, you know, we got a 2021 Ioniq last year, and and actually, it was it wasn't it wasn't a bad deal. It in fact, it was cheaper than when we bought cheaper to buy the electric that we bought than it than we did we we paid less by a few £100, fair enough, but then we did on our with our petrol Golf.

Colin Walker [00:23:49]:

And out of interest, what do you know what the battery health was of it when you got it? Do you

Liz Allan  [00:23:55]:

know this is another question. I was I was talking to there's another podcast that'll go out around the same time as this. At the time, no. Because we there were we only had about I think it was 12 or 14000 miles on

Colin Walker [00:24:07]:

the clock,

Liz Allan  [00:24:07]:

but I know that our vehicle has actually, there's other vehicles that have done, like, 200,000 miles, and the battery health has been at, like, 92%. So I'm not expecting that. I will do it, but, actually, in in some ways, there's not any not really any point in doing it because I know that it's gonna be around 100%. That's why

Colin Walker [00:24:28]:

I asked because that's I think that's one of the when we talk about all the different narrative challenges, that's one of the biggies that

Liz Allan  [00:24:36]:

I'm gonna

Colin Walker [00:24:36]:

focus on more because so many people are anxious. And I I get it because buying a car, a, gives a huge amount of money. When you're buying a second hand, it doesn't come with that same 8 year warranty you get from the scope from the beginning, when you buy new. And so a lot of people are really anxious about buying a vehicle and then suddenly been told they're gonna have to fork out a fortune to replace the battery. Yeah. Lots of lots of people tell you is gonna happen. But all the evidence I've seen is that the the the battery degradation is minimal. At which, they've surveyed.

Colin Walker [00:25:07]:

They found that even the people who drove around in the oldest EVs, the ones that kind of turned up at around 2014, the average battery health of those vehicles was still 92%.

Liz Allan  [00:25:17]:

Yeah. Yeah. You know,

Colin Walker [00:25:18]:

you're like so I think that is some more needs to be done. But I know Auto Trader are kinda pushing for government to actually introduce kind of a standardized scheme or score thing where whenever you're buying an EV secondhand, it tells you what the battery health is or what the reliability of these batteries in this, which I think would be really good just to kind of prove, look. Seriously, there's nothing to worry about, but, hopefully, it will give people that, what they need, that confidence to make that

Liz Allan  [00:25:42]:

I I totally agree. I totally agree. It's it's something, you know, I I didn't because I only had such such low mileage because I was looking for something around, like like I say, 12, 14,000 miles. And, you know, I didn't think that there would be an issue with the battery, but actually having something in writing that says this car has got this percentage battery health would really have given me even more confidence than than other consumers. It's not an EV. It's not like an Apple phone or an Android phone. It doesn't its battery doesn't knacker within, like, 3 years, does it? Do you know what I mean? It's it's not like that. They've got battery management systems in them.

Liz Allan  [00:26:22]:

So, you know, so act and it but if you if you floor it and you treat it badly, then, yes, it will have it will degrade the battery a bit. It probably more than it would do if somebody was driving it more economically.

Colin Walker [00:26:33]:

Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:26:34]:

But it is not like driving an iPhone. You know? It's not like that, is it?

Colin Walker [00:26:38]:

But then people don't have any other frame of reference. Exactly. Have is an iPhone. So the assumptions are made that, oh, EVs will go through the same thing, and they won't. You know? All the evidence is that that stat I quoted about surveys showing that EVs retain their health, even the really old ones. Mhmm. Nissan have come out and said the batteries of the EVs last longer than the cars. The cars get scrapped and the battery can be recycled or repurposed to other things.

Colin Walker [00:27:01]:

I think a load of Nissan LEAF batteries are now being used to provide backup storage at Iaccess Stadium in Amsterdam.

Liz Allan  [00:27:07]:

Yep.

Colin Walker [00:27:08]:

You know, it's you know, there's stories of Tesla's on the road with 300,000 miles and the clock still on the original battery. So, yeah, it's just it's that is a class that is an example of a misleading narrative that I think is the most one of the most impactful on consumer confidence. Mhmm. Yeah. They're gonna be I think we need to do more on that.

Liz Allan  [00:27:29]:

Because I suppose if you think about it, in in what we're still in, a a cost of living crisis, you know, people want to like you say, people want to make sure that when they buy something that's that, you know, because it's an a car and a house are the 2 most expensive things you're gonna pay for, aren't aren't they? And cars, no matter whether petrol, diesel, or electric, depreciate, but actually, it's not just the depreciation. If you're gonna keep a car and run it until whenever, you wanna actually real you know, recognize or you wanna be sure that that battery is gonna be okay for the length of time that you have it, and you'll be able to pass it on to somebody else, and they'll be fine with it. You know? So

Colin Walker [00:28:12]:

But that's why I always say to people, just you've got an exertion about these things, go and speak to an EV driver. Yeah. Don't listen to what you've some bloke called Jeff on YouTube has said to you or, like, some bloke you've met in there. Sorry. My dog's making weird noises in my feet. So I'm just gonna let him out. Bear with me.

Liz Allan  [00:28:29]:

Alright. Let's go. Alright. I'll make I'll make sure Tom Tom Tom, can you cut that little bit? That's alright. I have a look wonderful podcast producer who will be putting that.

Colin Walker [00:28:38]:

So yeah. Just go and speak to an EV driver. It's the best thing you can do is go, look. I've read this thing or this bloke called Dan in the pub told me this about what happens to the batteries, and you end up having to pay £20,000 to replace it, and oh my god. Can I speak to someone who actually has one? Do you have any problems with your batteries? It's like, no. It's at 96% health, and it's about 4, 5 years old. It's going just fine. Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:29:03]:

That's the best thing I could advise you, but I suppose that's easier said than done. That's what I'm trying to do, like, looking ahead for the rest of the year is try to get the voices of EV drivers out there a little bit more. Publicize those voices. That would be good.

Liz Allan  [00:29:15]:

Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. So just going back a second, I was gonna say, the other thing that I think we need we've talked about the dealerships pushing, you know, kind of pushing e EVs because of the the zed mandate, but we also need dealership support in in kind of, supporting that that the transition itself with regards to information. So so when I was test driving EVs, this is, you know, kind of last year, it was kind of quite there wasn't really much support from the dealerships. I think there was no there was a lack of incentive whether whereas there's an incentive now, you know, because of Zev. There was a lack of understanding and knowledge, you know, it it was just it just seemed to be a a real gap there that, actually, if people are going to places they'd normally go to, which is the the dealership, I I, in my local Hyundai dealership, I will try to avoid them because of the negativity that I got from them. And I was just thinking, I've got an EV now, and you're now saying I don't really agree with EVs.

Colin Walker [00:30:26]:

Yeah. That's that's, mean, I've heard that anecdotally quite a few times, people saying that, you know, dealers doing this. And I you know, I wonder how the car manufacturers feel about their dealers kind of like having a go at the products that they're response they're paying them to sell. Yeah. You know, these these as you say, these these manufacturers now here to hit targets. They need people to be kind of really kind of like telling people the truth about EV ownership and dispelling some of the myths. And that's not happening. But, I mean, it must have been my experience when I went to see a driver, an EV dealer, Kia, a couple of weekends.

Colin Walker [00:31:00]:

He was very positive about it. And he and but I think a lot of that is because they've they've given a lot of it all their dealer staff an EV as a company car.

Liz Allan  [00:31:09]:

Yes.

Colin Walker [00:31:09]:

The little things like that will make people realize, oh, yeah. These things were amazing. So yeah. And and, you know, look, I think this that expands to other areas, and I kind of get it. Look, You know, I know a lot of people who say that often their local mechanic will tell them of all the horrors that EVs happen, EVs offer. And that's probably you see it's similar in heat pumps, an awful lot of boiler installers and plumbers having a go at heat pumps because it's people perceive that this transition is a threat to their livelihood.

Liz Allan  [00:31:41]:

Yeah. And

Colin Walker [00:31:41]:

I sympathise with that. I get it. Yeah. It's not a reason to, dispel. I'm so sorry. Can you hear that? I've got dogs barking outside. Should we edit this, but I'm just gonna go out and ask if we can just have a minute of time. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:31:56]:

That's fine. That's fine. Don't worry.

Colin Walker [00:32:36]:

Sorry about that.

Liz Allan  [00:32:37]:

It's fine. Don't worry.

Colin Walker [00:32:40]:

2 dogs. He doesn't like the postman as an 18 month child of my mom. So

Liz Allan  [00:32:48]:

But carry on.

Colin Walker [00:32:49]:

Where we were.

Liz Allan  [00:32:50]:

No. I know. I've just it's I've I've lost it now. Don't worry. Don't worry. We will talk about dealerships.

Colin Walker [00:32:56]:

Yeah. Yeah. So there there's just, like, there's this I think I can understand that that is one concern. I think we don't talk about enough is this this profession that probably feels that this transition to EVs is a bit of a threat. Mhmm. I mean and, you know, what more we do do to reassure these professionals to offer those retraining opportunities so people don't talk it down because they are threatened by it. There is a bit of a chance of reality. There's another reality of EVs.

Colin Walker [00:33:21]:

They're much more reliable. There's less to go wrong. There's less to fix. There's less to service. Well, EVs don't really need servicing at all. So, yeah, that is gonna change kind of like the realities for some professions, but, certainly not a reason not to make the transition. And certainly people like dealers should be getting trained up and encouraged to not talk these products down because it's not helpful.

Liz Allan  [00:33:43]:

No. Exactly. In fact, you know what? I I was actually at an event about 3 weeks ago now talking about kind of not it was a dealership, but it was a chap who owned a garage. Mhmm. And, so there was a there was a panel discussion going on. And this chap asked a question, and he, he knew in the audience there were obviously people who were interested in transitioning. And his his question was relating to the fact that his garage was being affected because of the fact that EVs don't need as much kind of maintenance. And, you know, it felt to me it was it was it's a it's a difficult thing to deal with when you're on a panel, isn't it? When you get something like that because that the other people would be listening to what he was he was saying, so he was being quite negative about the transition.

Colin Walker [00:34:36]:

And the response, unfortunately, is quite a brutal one. And, like, we did not make the transition from horses and horse and karts to cars out of concern for the employment opportunities of farriers. Right? Yeah. You know? We didn't call off a whole technological transition because people have put horseshoes on horses, which is a huge business, obviously. Like, you know, employees put in this how many people. We didn't stop it because the technological change was so beneficial in so many other ways that this was just one of the things you had to manage. And for the same reason, this transition to EVs is gonna have to happen and will happen. And the thing is this is the thing.

Colin Walker [00:35:20]:

Like, new opportunities will emerge. It like we could go I mean, I'm not an economics expert, but EVs save their drivers so much money. You know? I'm a thou over £1,000 a year total cost of ownership costs if you can run your vehicle and charge it from home. That gives people a lot more disposable income in their pocket. They'll spend on other things, generate economic opportunities elsewhere. So, yeah, without going into the kind of, like, nuts and butts of all that, it's not a reason not to make the transition to be

Liz Allan  [00:35:47]:

honest. And I was gonna say, overall, over the last kind of 10, 20 years, there's been less to do in cars just generally, hasn't there? Because, you know, I would say kinda like, you know, you've got the gen the central brain of the car that kind of you know, there's that's where or so for example, last year, we had a problem with our VW Golf, and that's part we were already thinking about moving over anyway, but the infotainment system just totally kind of died on us. Mhmm. And VW were gonna charge us £2,000 to get a new infotainment system, you know, which was just oh my god. Just thinking about it, it was like, well, so hang on. The central bay brain of the car, we're gonna have to replace this whole thing. So I went through this massive palaver. You know, so it it's just suffice to say, I only paid £300 to and it got it was repaired by a chap up in Liverpool somewhere and sent it back, and it worked.

Liz Allan  [00:36:47]:

And it was fantastic. And I said to this guy, he needs to have a business. But but, you know so things have changed in vehicles, haven't they? So there's a lot less to do generally anyway other than the mechanic regular mechanic stuff.

Colin Walker [00:36:58]:

There's quite a lot an awful lot of being a car mechanic now. They seem to be about plugging your laptop into the car. Yes.

Liz Allan  [00:37:04]:

Yeah. Not

Colin Walker [00:37:05]:

necessarily pulling stuff out and getting stuff done, getting getting yourself dirty. And that would presumably have required some retraining. System mechanics to kind of deal with the fact that modern ICE vehicles were now much more computerized and that that ICU played a much more fundamental role on how the car was operated. So I presume it needs some retraining, and there will need to be some retraining for electric vehicles.

Liz Allan  [00:37:30]:

And there's some I was gonna say there's a lot of skills that are needed, you know, as I was at the REA a couple of weeks back now, and they we were they were talking about skills and the the amount of skills that are needed in just the the set all of the sectors that are involved in the transition to net zero is massive, isn't it? Like,

Colin Walker [00:37:48]:

you don't just servicing cars. You need people to kind of install and service charging points. That's gonna become a bigger and bigger kind of feature of our economy. Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's it's it's a new economic opportunity, definitely. And, you know, and then then that moves the debate also onto the future of the UK's car industry. You know, our car industry generates well over £20,000,000,000 in export revenue every year alone. It employs directly and indirectly something like 800,000 people.

Colin Walker [00:38:19]:

Wow. And that's one of the other problems about, you talk to transition down or try to slow it here and say that the car industry should be supported to carry on building ICE vehicles while being supported to make the transition to build the electric vehicles of the future, you're basically signing the death warrant of our car industry. And what what think about that. That's 20,000,000,000 less to spend on public services and kind of like, you know, that's, you know, tax revenue for that. There's that's an awful lot of jobs that go if you don't make that transition. So when people say that the move to EVs is a threat to our car industry, it's quite the opposite. If we don't embrace this, all of our major export we export, like, 80% of our vehicles support, and over half of them go to the EU, which is introducing laws to formally phase out petrol and diesel cars, so does China, so an awful lot of American states. Then moving to EVs, that's gonna be where the demand is going.

Colin Walker [00:39:11]:

And if we don't produce the product that those markets demand, they'll just buy them from someone else.

Liz Allan  [00:39:15]:

Cost it well.

Colin Walker [00:39:16]:

So our car industry will wither and die in the vein if it is not supported to make the transition to EVs. And to be honest, this government's track record in implementing and rolling out an industrial strategy designed to help make that transition happen is not good. So, yeah, that's that's when we you know, an awful lot of people kind of fear change and highlight the consequences of what they think that change will involve, but I'm more concerned about the consequences of us not embracing that change, both environmentally and economically.

Liz Allan  [00:39:46]:

I'd love to see some positivity coming through, but I think we're probably gonna there's only one way that we're going to be able to get that, and we'll see we'll see how that works later on in the year when we get to to a general election. So, you know but, actually, if we had some positivity from the government, what what kind of what kind of strategies would you be thinking that that they need to start implementing Mhmm. To kind of to counteract all of the negativity that we've had. What support do we need in future from the government to kind of we've talked about the tipping point, but actually we're talking about moving away from all this negativity. What what do you think we need?

Colin Walker [00:40:33]:

Well, the House of Lords earlier this year produced a report that kind of identified misinformation about EVs as one of the main barriers that's holding back the transition, and they called on the government to do more to tackle misinformation. I completely agree misinformation needs to be tackled. I'm just not sure if there's much the government can do, because I'm not sure if how much trust there is in the government. If a government says, you might have read this, but actually, it's this. People would, I don't trust your voice. You would say that. I'm not. You're trying to force us out of our cars.

Colin Walker [00:41:01]:

You would say this. So I'm not sure how much they can necessarily do in that space, although I'd like to see them try a bit more, be a bit more proactive. They have been guilty, I think, of telling saying we're gonna be the 7th mandate. We all need to be moving to EVs. But then when they pushed that phase out date back, it was kind of like pandering to the negative ideas that people had about electric vehicles.

Liz Allan  [00:41:23]:

Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:41:24]:

By suggesting that they somehow were imposing a cost on households, but it's quite the opposite. So some of their actions have been they've undermined consumer confidence in the transition that they want all consumers to embark on. So that seems a bit unhelpful, so less of that, please. But in terms of practical things they can do, I think they could they could play a lot more interventionist kind of guiding role into kind of kind of trying to speed up and coordinate the rollout of public charges. Do a lot more there. And that's not all about necessarily throwing money at the problem. That's about, removing the planning deadlocks that are resulting in planning applications for the installation of new charging points getting just stuck in local authorities for Yeah. An enormous amount of time.

Colin Walker [00:42:12]:

Yeah. It's about just stopping this kind of postcode lottery about what kind of council you get in terms of their appetite to work with you to install things like a trench outside your terrace house, so you can actually charge your car from your house rather than relying on a public charge point. There shouldn't be variation between local authorities. There should be a standardized accelerated process by which those things can be installed across the country. And government could play a role in kind of breaking that deadlock and just kind of helping people access the considerable savings that come from EV ownership if you can charge your vehicle at home. I mean, EVs are still cheaper to run if you use slower public charging points, but it's just so much off the scale if you can do it at home. It's brilliant. So they could do an awful lot to kind of really unlock those planning deadlocks, I think.

Colin Walker [00:42:58]:

And I think listen to people like Auto Trader who are saying more about there's something you could do to work with manufacturers to introduce a standard that demonstrates it to people the kind of the quality and the health of the battery they're getting when they buy an EV secondhand. Those kind of things they can do. It's not all about throwing money at the problem. It doesn't necessarily require subsidies to be reintroduced. Because I am a little skeptical about sometimes if your government offers a subsidy, does that subsidy get handed down to the consumer at the end of the day, or does it get swallowed up by the car manufacturer? So so I'm not I think the market forces have already brought EVs down to place or bringing them to a place where there's really not a huge different much differential between the cost of a new EV and the cost of a new petrol car. That's that gap is narrowing, and it's certainly reached parity on the secondhand market. It's I think it's becoming less about price. Price is still a factor or the perception of price is an issue is certainly a factor, but I think it's anxieties about charging.

Colin Walker [00:43:59]:

It's anxieties about the health of the battery or the of the of the longevity of the product that people are being encouraged to buy. There's more the government could do to address those things, but it's just quite passive at the moment.

Liz Allan  [00:44:10]:

So do you do you get will you or do you get an opportunity to talk to government about these things in in, you know, in the kind of in the role that you're in then?

Colin Walker [00:44:21]:

We our main communication with them is indirectly through the through the press. But we do, so I'm kind of hoping meeting with a few MPs in parliament next week. And obviously, we've got a general election in the horizon. So a lot of the MPs that we have now may well not be MPs in the next election.

Liz Allan  [00:44:37]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:44:38]:

About finding a time a little bit. But I do think it's it's about trying to kind of build up a few more allies in parliament who are willing to speak out a little more favorably on this issue or speak out or challenge things said about EVs that are incorrect. Like, John Redwood is quite vocal on Twitter about his thoughts about electric vehicles, and most of what he says is not rooted in fact. What what what more can be done to challenge those views by an elected member of the people by another elected member of the people of the of the population. So, so, yes, there's more. But the major the major legislative moment to accelerate the EV transition has happened, which was and fair play to the government for doing it. It's pretty much leading the world in terms of introducing kind of binding targets for the number of EVs that, manufacturers have to sell. So it has to be 22% in this year.

Colin Walker [00:45:30]:

Now why is every year until it hits 80% in 2030 and a 100 percent by 2035? That's pretty good. But I do think targets like that need to be accompanied by some more proactive member measures that address people's concerns about buying an EV. And I think a lot of that is charging and battery health.

Liz Allan  [00:45:53]:

Do you think that would be some kind of public information kinda campaign, that kind of thing? Do you think that'd help?

Colin Walker [00:46:01]:

I think it would probably help, but I don't I'm always wary about just relying on that solely.

Liz Allan  [00:46:06]:

Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:46:09]:

I think there are, like, quite unglamorous things like that introducing a standard for kind of, like, battery health.

Liz Allan  [00:46:19]:

Yeah. I think. Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:46:20]:

There on an advert for the second hand EV you're looking at that you're just seeing go, the health of this battery is x percent or, you know, this is the quality the batteries from this manufacturer are. So I mean, it it it's an early idea, so it needs to be talked through. And I know auto trader have had a lot more thoughts on this and are pushing this one. So I'd like to kind of familiarize myself with it a little bit more. But I do think that just immediate from a if I certified it from a quality source and I think this is where government is trusted. If I had a government verified, kind of certified kind of, like, score or statements about the health of the battery you're buying, I think that would give consumers a lot of confidence. Because at the moment, they don't see that, but what they do see is on social media going, oh, you might end up paying 20 grand for a new battery. Do you want to do that? Everyone's like, you can end up buying a new engine for a car, but I don't know.

Liz Allan  [00:47:08]:

Could be like an addition to an MOT, couldn't it?

Colin Walker [00:47:10]:

Yeah. It's just be something You know?

Liz Allan  [00:47:12]:

So that you've actually got your MOT's annual. So your annual MOT, as part of it, it could be battery health at this level.

Colin Walker [00:47:22]:

Mileage. So, yeah, they could take your battery health. I think I think there are just some solutions there because I think on the whole, you know, the government's made this £1,000,000,000 fund available to kind of accelerate charger rollout. And I think a few months ago, there was loads of newspaper articles about the fact that not a penny of it had been spent. Like, why not? Why not? I mean, that would be really helpful. So, yeah, it's just it just feels like apart from the zed mandate, a lot of government activity to promote and encourage and enable uptake of EVs has been quite lacking. One area I will give them credit for is, like, very low business in kind rates, which is really driven up EV sales, to fleets. Yes.

Colin Walker [00:48:05]:

And you get this all the time. Whenever new car sales come out, one of the attack lines is, you have most of these to fleet, so they don't count. Like, why don't they count? They're cars. They're still being driven by people. They've displaced the petrol or diesel car. And also, in 3 to 4 years time, those brand new fleet EVs will be being sold to private buyers in the second hand market. In fact, I think the fleet has an incredibly import the fleet sector has an incredibly important role to drive up the size and health of our secondhand market. So yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:48:35]:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Colin Walker [00:48:36]:

It has helped that.

Liz Allan  [00:48:37]:

Absolutely. Because you've got, like you say, the the kind of the transition then you've got is it about 3 years before sort of like, yeah, before sort of, like, cars cars that go into fleet come out as used, etcetera. So they'll once they start coming through, then that'll be that'll be massive. That that, again, is how I we got our Ioniq. You know? So it was it was used as a I think it was a subscription vehicle.

Colin Walker [00:49:03]:

Mhmm. You

Liz Allan  [00:49:03]:

know? But, literally, it was in really, really good nick, and, yeah, I would I was just keeping an eye on Autotrader and looking for electric and it had a budget and you know and it was it was great. That and, doctor Yoon MacTuerck and having a conversation with me and my husband. So that was the other thing. He's always good. He's always good. So I was gonna say, right, I'm gonna find I'm gonna ask you a final question. And I know I know what this answer is. I was gonna say, can you leave your job behind when you leave work? You can't, can you?

Colin Walker [00:49:40]:

Crazy. I blame social media for that. It's Quite hard not just to case you check-in on Twitter and just see that, I don't know, someone like Andrew Neil has just spouted load of nonsense about renewables will result in blackouts or whatever. And it is hard not to engage with that. But it's also reflectable. I also like the fact that I'm in a job with I'm working on an issue that I really care about, and it's something I still wanna kinda follow and keep an eye on when I'm not being paid to do so. Yeah. That's kind of the that's the ideal job, right, isn't it? It's something that

Liz Allan  [00:50:11]:

Absolutely.

Colin Walker [00:50:12]:

It's something you'd be engaged in anyway because you care about it.

Liz Allan  [00:50:17]:

Yeah. So I'm kind

Colin Walker [00:50:17]:

of, like, blessed in that respect. I've also been paid to do this and focus on it. It it is hard, and it's always been the you do get a bit can be a bit depressive, to be quite honest, when you look at what we're up against in making to transition to net 0. The I completely understand people's concerns about their personal circumstances and their what what's important to them and their freedom to do this and their concern about budgets, particularly in a a cost of living crisis. But this people just completely sometimes forget why we're doing this anyway. There is a climate crisis happening. It's happening because we're pumping c o two into the atmosphere year on year. We need to stop doing that.

Colin Walker [00:51:04]:

One of the things that does that a lot is how we get around. We need to find solutions. And then what's because that's now happening and some people are anxious about that or scared about making that move, then they will challenge or deny the thing that is happening that is making us have to make that move. So you're, I'm seeing a lot more climate change denial challenging the science on Twitter now because people don't wanna admit they don't wanna make the move to EV because they just like the car they have. They won't go, I'm not making that move because I actually challenge and deny the signs. You know, like, it's it's it's been put to bed years ago. So seeing that coming up can be a bit hard work, and you feel like you're up against it day in, day out.

Liz Allan  [00:51:50]:

You just need to tag my husband in on that one.

Colin Walker [00:51:52]:

Yeah. Yeah. There's plenty of people. This is it. Like, oh, there's someone so sad this. You're like, I don't care who's downstairs. The vast overwhelming majority of the scientific community, people with much bigger brains than ours whose entire lives have been dedicated to objectively and critically analyzing the data have said unequivocally that man made climate change is happening. Absolutely.

Colin Walker [00:52:13]:

And that is gonna there are so many disasters for us as a species and for, like, all species on earth.

Liz Allan  [00:52:20]:

Mhmm. We

Colin Walker [00:52:20]:

didn't do anything about it. And just ignoring that and thinking you know better is just I would never dare challenge these people. That's the thing, like, people go, you just say this and I'm like, these aren't my own opinions. These are opinions based on the evidence produced by the experts who know a lot more about this than I don't. What what what experts are telling you what your counter opinion is?

Liz Allan  [00:52:41]:

It's the it's Bob down the pub.

Colin Walker [00:52:43]:

That's what the

Liz Allan  [00:52:44]:

experts are. Or my hairdresser said Yeah. That blah blah blah, EVs are or net zero or climate change is this. Yeah. So it's again, it but it's it's like you said, it's about the con confirmation bias as well. People just, you know and and I think I think some of it also is the fact that people are thinking, well, it ain't my problem because by the time this all hits, I'm gonna be gone or whatever, which is quite horrible. But We're

Colin Walker [00:53:16]:

not believing our kids.

Liz Allan  [00:53:19]:

And that and that. And the kids and and the kids of our kids, etcetera. So, you know, all of our generations, do we really, really, really wanna leave it in such a crap state that we're, you know, we are kind of heading to? So, anyway, let's not let's not end on a on a negative.

Colin Walker [00:53:34]:

Well, the positive is that you can do your bit for the for the climate and tackle the climate quest by getting an EV. But that's not the only benefit you get. You save lots of money, 100 of pounds a year, 1,000. But literally, once we did the total cost of ownership analysis of, like, the top 10 selling EVs in 2023 and compared them to their petrol equivalents, You know, their total cost of ownership over their lifetime, which is their their upfront purchase price, insurance, tax, servicing, and critical fuel. We found that these things save people it's well into it's well over £10,000 over the lifetime of that vehicle. Oh, Yeah. Well over £10,000. Yeah.

Colin Walker [00:54:15]:

That's not an that's that's quite a lot of money back in your pocket Mhmm. If you spend on other stuff.

Liz Allan  [00:54:20]:

Absolutely.

Colin Walker [00:54:20]:

That's what's that's what I like that's what's the good thing about working on the issue of EVs is that your then their only benefit isn't just their lower c o two emissions, their better environmental impact. It's that

Liz Allan  [00:54:34]:

It's cheaper.

Colin Walker [00:54:34]:

It's cheaper service, a lot quicker. A lot of people find it nicer to drive. And we we had this really good conversation with Openreach. We're the 2nd largest fleet operator in the UK. And all their drivers who used to be driving diesel transits and are now in electrics

Liz Allan  [00:54:48]:

Yep.

Colin Walker [00:54:48]:

Will report being less fatigued, find them a much better a much better place

Liz Allan  [00:54:52]:

to drive.

Colin Walker [00:54:53]:

Just generally happy with them.

Liz Allan  [00:54:54]:

They are lovely. They are lovely cars to drive, honestly. You know? And I and I I end up having to drive quite a lot. So and I wouldn't I I always thought, ah, gears, you know, I need that but actually do you know what it's it's peaceful It's nice. I have my music on. It's just

Colin Walker [00:55:13]:

Getting in being in an EV and then getting back into a diesel absolutely sucks. You're like, oh my god. They're slow. And, oh, when I put my foot down, I actually don't it doesn't take off straight away. I have to wait for the turbo to, like, you know.

Liz Allan  [00:55:26]:

And the braking, you have to you actually have to brake rather than having the 1 pedal pedal driving.

Colin Walker [00:55:31]:

When you have to you want to accelerate, you put your foot down and you've got the automatic needs about half a second to kind of go, I don't know what the game to be in. Okay. Let's go and just it's just it's it's people there's so many people some of the most vocal people in opposition to EVs have never that's the thing I really dislike. Haven't even bothered trying one. The opinion hasn't even been formed. No. I I've driven both of these, but I think electrics aren't good. They're just and that's what that's one of my main observations I put when I first started working in the sector is pretty much the entire EV debate seems to be people who've never owned an EV telling people who own an EV what it's like to own an EV.

Liz Allan  [00:56:07]:

Yeah. I know. That's how

Colin Walker [00:56:10]:

so much of the debate boils down to, and it's infuriating. And I'd encourage people to remember that when they're assessing the source of the information that they're listening to about EVs is, does this person have any lived experience of driving or owning? If not, this

Liz Allan  [00:56:26]:

Hate no notice of them.

Colin Walker [00:56:28]:

Significant pinch of salt.

Liz Allan  [00:56:29]:

Yeah. And talk to talk to one of your friends, neighbors, cousins, second cousins, whoever who's got one, best mates and that, you know, and and just talk to them about it, and and they'll give you some, you know, they'll give you their honest feedback.

Colin Walker [00:56:43]:

Best of it can be done. Totally.

Liz Allan  [00:56:45]:

So, Colin, I'm gonna end by saying, you're so for those who want to get hold of Colin or see what he's saying on Twitter or x whatever. Don't like Colin at that. It's Colin water Walker so Colin Walker 79. The and I'll show I'll share all of this in the show notes as well. And the the website for the energy and climate intelligence unit unit is eciu.net. So all of your links and everything, you're on you're on LinkedIn and every everywhere like that, aren't you? Yep. So I will share all of that. It's been really, really interesting talking to you.

Colin Walker [00:57:21]:

Pleased to be here.

Liz Allan  [00:57:21]:

And I'm glad we've ended up on on a positive note. There's been quite a lot of negative things, but we've ended up on a positive note. And I thank you ever so much for your time. Pleasure.

Colin Walker [00:57:29]:

Pleasure.

Liz Allan  [00:57:31]:

So to everybody else thank you for listening and watching and I shall see you all next time. Bye bye.