I wrote this last year but never posted it. I had just returned from China.

Everywhere you go in China the mobile phone is never far from view, on the metro, the street, or on the bus they sit glued to the tiny screen as though their life’s depended on it. Their faces are often only inches from the screen which sometimes gives them a ghostly appearance.

Electric cars are also very common here and I’ve been really surprised by the diversity of them, some brands I have never heard of before and then there are the replicas of other expensive European brands. Mind you it seems that Tesla has quite the foothold here.

So what do you get when you combine the two of these things? Well you get many folk sitting in their cars watching TV, either on the big screen or as I saw the other day a girl had propped her phone onto the steering wheel to watch the small screen rather than use the tablet on the middle of the dash.

So is the electric car popular because it’s electric or is it just a big extension of the phone? I think in China it is the latter.

The electric car is made for the Chinese consumers, it’s just a big phone on wheels and they are everywhere. I’ve been in a few of them, a friend has a BMW I 3 which is comfortable and quiet and she says that if it’s also more economical to run than her old petrol powered car.

The Chinese are not drivers, no one has really experienced the joy of belting down a country road flat out, using a manual gearbox in perfect harmony with hands and feet feeling the rush of adrenaline as you nearly make a mistake. For most of them the car is a tool or a status symbol and so therfore an electric car is perfect for them because it is no more than a tool, they don’t buy it for the thrill of driving.

EV’s are struggling to gain a foothold in many countries and the push to net zero is slowly killing the car industry in Europe and I think for many of us it’s because these cars have no soul. I have never driven one and would love to have a go to see what they are like, however I have driven a CVT Subaru which someone told me is a similar experience. You don’t feel the gears change , it’s just constant acceleration and you don’t have the gearbox to play with, you don’t feel connected to the car…..you are just hanging on for grim death.

I feel that they have a place in this world, however at the moment they do not deliver the driver experience that so many people desire. Most “Petrol Heads” would rather have a rear wheel drive front engined car that they can give it laldy.🤗

Since I wrote this I have had a drive in an electric car and I was stunned at the acceleration. Your head is thumped into the headrest. The acceleration is warp speed.

It was easy to drive, responsive and comfortable but I only drove it on the highway not along winding roads… however I was pleasantly surprised by the experience and would consider one if I could charge it at home. The MG EV I drove was getting just under 5 km/kW which if you can charge at home and especially if you can use solar then it would be very cheap to run.

The downside of most EV’S in Australia is the range of them, driving 500 km here is very y common and not many of them can do that on a single charge.

If I had the money I would possibly buy one, I don’t drive to much these days and so a range of 3 to 4 hundred km would be fine however I would still keep the old Ford for the longer journeys,as my friend James that has the MG  has kept his diesel four wheel drive.