Maybe 10 years ago people started using smart phones with lithium-ion batteries. A small number of them burst into flames, for no apparent reason but probably a chemical reaction. As a result, the royal Mail banned the transport of goods including specifically lithium-ion batteries, but they became wary of all batteries.



Around the same time the new fleet of Boing Aircraft, maybe the 737, started suffering electric fires from the batteries mounted below the cockpit, probably also lithium-ion batteries. The makers of the batteries modified the chemical content and smart phones and planes now very rarely burst into flames.

More recently container ships carrying electric vehicles from the continent and the Far-East have had vehicle batteries spontaneously combust, some cause the complete loss of the ship and all its vehicles.  Also, electric cars are much more likely to spontaneously combust than petrol and diesel vehicles, referred to as internal combustion engines, (ICE).

In December 2022 I wrote a Press Release about the comparative cost of the Royal Mail fleet of 41,500 petrol and diesel Fiat Doblo’s with a similar size e-Expert and e-Partner vans. Using the new fleet of electric vans would cost £640m a year more to run than the ICE versions.

At that time the Royal Mail was losing £1m a day due to operating costs exceeding income. OFGEM has continued to fund new electric vans to the Delivery Offices as the older vehicles are retired. What no-one seems to have considered is that although the batteries have nominal 7-year life, they also have a life based on charge and recharge equivalent to 100,000 miles, which if the van does 100miles a day, this limits the life to just 3 years!

Having spoken to the delivery van Postmen they have told me they are wary about using the electric vans on high mileage routes because of the likelihood of running out of charge and becoming stranded.

Last week around 18th January Hertz in the USA announced it is selling off its fleet of 20,000 electric vehicles because the customers having used them once or twice then go back to hiring petrol and diesel vehicles. The customers have the same wariness of finding suitable charging points during their journeys. The point here also is, with high mileage rental vehicles, who will want to buy them. They might be quite a lot of miles on the clock with only limited battery life left.

On 20th January 2024 on GB News, it was announced that in the last 6 months the Royal Mail has lost £390m, that is £2.1m a day. They really cannot afford to run electric vans!

Giant batteries made up from end-of-life electric vehicle batteries also spontaneously combust and now there are signs popping up around the country saying No to Dangerous Giant Batteries.

Now I hear that multi-story car parks are now limiting electric vehicles to the top deck only. Which means there will be a lot of wasted spaces on that deck because who can risk parking an ICE car next to a number of electric ones.

Rishi Sunak has recently confirmed by an act of Parliament to enforce that by 2030 a dealer can only sell one petrol or diesel car for every 4 electric vehicles sold. But the sales of electric vehicles to the public and now also to fleets are falling fast. If the statute stays on the books, electric cars sales will fall to zero and that will stop the sales of ICE vehicle as well. The government will have successfully stopped the sales of domestic vehicles. All in the scheme to meet the impossible target of Net Zero.

It is no good voting for Labour or the Liberal Democrats in the forthcoming general election because they are even greater fanatics with Net Zero than the Conservatives.

A vote for UKIP is a vote to keep the efficient, low cost, and safe ICE family car.

Antony Nailer

UK Independence Party Spokesman for Energy and the Environment