Hybrid cars are stupid and electric cars...well they're just bollocks!

Bollocks!

How often have you bought something electrical and techy, something you've wanted for ages, perhaps a new laptop, shiny and new out the box.

Then after you've spent several lifetimes setting it all up, shouting at the screen, falling out with those around you and generally ensuring all appears as you'd like it to, all too often you discover your new piece of gadgetry doesn't really do what you'd like it to do very well. 

Or if it does, it works well for about 25 minutes but then starts to slow down, the battery starts to degrade, or the screen flickers. Or you discover that you've obviously bought a laptop from some dodgy Polish immigrant and for the rest of time you'll spend hours removing viruses from 'debbie does eastern european gypsies.com'. 

Useless piece of electronic trinketry

To make matters worse, once you've spent several decades and a further sixteen billion dollars getting things fixed or set-up in a manner that makes them suitable for the purpose you had originally intended, the manufacturer helpfully announces that since you bought your item, they have brought out six technology upgrades. The result they explain, is that they are no longer able to assist you in removing your useless piece of electronic trinketry from the anus of your dog, which is by this point, where you'll have rammed it! 

And that's where we get to the crux of the matter, electronics advance so quickly and change in their intended direction so rapidly in this our modern world that something heralded as the new technological messiah one minute, is out of date and as welcome as Sarah Palin at an abortion choice convention the next. 

Feeding baboons on Faceplant

Look at your cell-phone as the perfect example. When you first got it seemed it would do everything for you. You could sack the butler, retire the driver and the nanny as the time you'll save in having this new amazing piece of millennia wonderment means you could sell the children and be off to the Sudan posting pictures of yourself feeding baboons on Faceplant.

I absolutely guarantee the very next thing you'll see is an advertisement explaining that your phone's makers have just launched the new XT1 Plus Super Groovy model and the result is that your device now has all the social cache of an Ebola victim and worse still, will likely blow up next Tuesday taking all your data and precious settings with it. 

Hotchpotch of two things mashed together. 

And so with the preamble past us, we come crashing inelegantly towards the point of this current missive, Hybrid and Electric Cars. I'm guessing, perhaps hopefully, you may, might, possibly, see where I'm going. 

Let's take the 'Hybrid' first as even the name is designed to tell you exactly what it does.

It has a small electric motor that only operates at low revs, when you're taking off from a stop or slowing down. Then when you go past a pre-ordained speed a standard petrol engine takes over powering the car and charging the batteries. 

Of course the silence in using the electric motor can be hugely entertaining as children and elderly people will not hear you approach. This then allows you to frighten these annoying demographics to, in the case of the older people, death and home to mummy and off the bleedin road in the case of the children. 

Now in theory I like the idea, but the trouble is the very concept of the 'hybrid'. I've never known anything that by definition is a hotchpotch of two things mashed together, to be as good as the two things by themselves. 

Of course a pro-Hybrid argument and one of the main reasons people will buy a, Toyota Prius for example, is fuel economy. That and likely some hippy nonsense about saving Brian the Iguana from farmers in Myanmar. 

Now here's the hot tamale folks. The Prius's fuel economy is advertised at 4.7 litres of fuel consumed for every 100 kilometres of travel. Now that's good, very good in fact. 

But Toyota's own diesel powered Corolla will do the same, and from an engine that I guarantee will last significantly longer than one blessed with hundreds of kilos of electronics and will cost you indescribable amounts less to fix when it goes wrong too.

The finances don't stack up either.

A Toyota Prius costs between $28 and $35,000 to buy new. Whereas you could buy a low kilometre two - three year old example of the diesel Corolla for $12 to $15,000. The finances don't stack up either. 

So, a Hybrid is expensive to buy, it has rival 'normal engined' cars that are just as frugal when it comes to fuel consumption. It'll be very expensive to fix when the electrical drive components go wrong which they will, and to top that lot off they have batteries that are designed to last only 7 years. Only a complete replacement set costing between $7 and $10,000 will fix it which means your new car will experience depreciation like it's been tied to a very large rock and dropped from the top of the Sky Tower! 

Now entirely electric cars. 

These vehicles are entirely pointless and are the equivalent of being asked to cure world hunger and being supplied with nothing more than a tube of Vagisil. 

Put simply, they don't work. At least not in the manner the marketers tell us these cars are designed for. 

We're told they're the way of the future, just plug them in at home or the office and our planet will once again resemble a field filled with colourful daisies on a summers afternoon. 

To charge from empty takes 8 hours and the brochure will cheerfully explain that will get you 150 kilometres of range, enough surely for most everyday commutes to home and back. 

Grumping teenager

Of course the reality will be half that range and if by some chance you've only managed an 80% charge since you last used the car, either because you forgot to plug it in when you got home or because the grumping teenager took the plug out to charge their I-phone 82, you'll end up stuck 10 kilometres from home, fuming with rage and with a car that you can't tow, because there's no neutral and you'll bugger the engine. 

In addition, one of the biggest issues with entirely electric cars is that their basic premise fails to consider that in most parts of the world, the electricity used to power them is produced by burning fossil fuels, something far more harmful to the environment than petroleum. 

Therefore in buying one with the belief that you're either saving money or saving the planet, in truth you're the motoring equivalent of Russell Crowe in Les Miserables, hopelessly overreaching yourself and drowning in a pit of off-key ideals. How's that for a segway!

So, the entirely electric car is expensive to buy, expensive to fix, won't get you where you need to be, can't be towed to where you need to be when you do run out of juice and something that doesn't even achieve the environmental benefits it claims to. 

Your friends will think you a touch odd!

The biggest however, the absolutely biggest issue with both Hybrid cars and entirely electric cars is this.

Your fellow human beings will think you a touch odd! 

Yes you may well believe yourself an environment loving do-gooder with the green grass of moral high ground firmly beneath your feet along with a warm cosy feeling in your heart. Your friends however and those other members of the public around you, will think you a twat. 

So in an attempt to bring some finality to this, perhaps my most controversial of rants to date, please remember these musings and these very words. 

For frugality in fuel consumption is a good thing and making use of the planet's, indeed your own resources sensibly is crucial, but for crying out loud, Hybrid cars are stupid and electric cars...well they're just bollocks!

Till next time,

Gordy