Reader letter: People don’t realise the knock-on effect of electric cars

Picture: PA WIRE

Electric vehicles by 2040 is great but people don’t realise the knock-on effect of this.

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As more and more vehicles become electric then refineries will produce less fuel for the remaining vehicles that use petrol or diesel, making it far more expensive to produce. 40 tonne lorries running on batteries - it’s not going to happen, as well as farm/building plant.

All the additional costs would be passed on to consumers.

The petrol forecourt would become very rare, as most profits for garages don’t come from fuel but from food and drink sold while filling your car. So if garages lost 75pc of customers how many could survive on a few lorry drivers and footfall customers?

Just look at what happened to village garages.

If you live on a terraced street in Norwich with probably lots of cars parked on the street and rarely outside your own house, how are all these vehicles going to be recharged?

Don’t think extension cables running up and down or across streets are going to be allowed. On street pay as you charge charging points would restrict the number of parking places and parking on pavements would be impossible due to all the new charging street furniture, as most terraced streets are not wide enough for vehicles to park fully on the road on both sides of the road at the same time.

As a result most streets would be double yellow lines down one side and every adjacent street would be the same, halving the number of vehicles parked in most streets and nowhere else to move to.

The only answer would be to make every available bit of spare land or grassed area a parking/charging point - and this is progress? Councils better start now, as 20 years to sort this out doesn’t seem long enough.