Oxford Is Banning Everything With An Engine - Starting In 2020
Well, how do you like this? Anything Paris can do, Oxford can look down its nose at. The English city, famous for its university and for generally hating cars in general, has announced a zero-emission zone starting in 2020.
This ban is more clearly-worded than the others we’ve seen. It’s a straightforward zero-emission policy, banning petrol and diesel cars as well as any hybrid that has a fossil-fuel combustion engine. So, if you live just outside Oxford, work in the centre and have just bought a Porsche 918 Spyder thinking you’d be safe from low-emission zone restrictions, Oxford City Council would like to tell you to get bent.
Actually, it’s not quite that bad. In 2020 just a few streets will start operating a policy that sees every vehicle with an engine banned. Even taxis and buses will be affected. Gradually, the whole city will be added to the scheme and even HGVs will be stopped from entering to deliver goods. If there aren’t widely available (and financially viable) electric trucks and vans by then… well, the people of Oxford will be in trouble, won’t they.
The full scheme won’t be in place until 2035, but busy city centre streets will be metaphorically roped off to combustion engines in just over a couple of years. How, exactly, are deliveries going to be made? Will the postal services have to invest in electric vans just for Oxford? This reeks of poorly thought-out political point-scoring.
Oxford’s EV infrastructure growth plans at this point are pretty pathetic. There’s half a million pounds on tap for charging points for taxis, and £800,000 more for – wait for it – a whole 100 charging points for residents. Yep, £8000 each for something you can buy yourself for your home or office for comfortably less than £1000. That’s including fitting, too. Here, good CTzens, is typical British council mismanagement at its finest. Idiots.
Meanwhile, the population of Oxford is currently about 160,000. A hundred charging sockets isn’t going to cut it. The council is throwing this new legislation around while the actual practicalities of making it happen – we call it ‘common sense’ – has been forgotten. Well done, guys.
Comments
Inb4 rolls up in a 1998 Dodge Ram with overboosted cummins and rolls coal
If electric cars were really better for people, then people would be buying them. The government wouldn’t have to enforce electric cars if it actually made any sense to use them. Capitalism 101.
Not really an argument at all. People will neglect doing a lot of things that are objectively good for them. Remember recycling ? Yeah that wasn’t very spontaneously adopted by the people was it ?
Agree, if it would be good, and if anyone would actually want electric cars, people would buy them, for last years, few years ago electric cars existed, but people weren’t as stupid as today, and it was harder to manipulate most of them, today people are sitting on Facebook all day and it is so easy manipulate them. People believe that they “need this” even they don’t.
My father bought new car, because he’s in his 40’s and got enough of cars that are braking down all the time. This junk has so much electronics in it, that car dealer’s service spend over a month try to find a problem that caused knocking at the back of the car (AWD/4WD). Problem causing it, were tyres not specificly for this specific car, it created a chain that send wrong signals to the rear diff and it didn’t know, if back diff should or should not be on.
New cars may be safer, but all the electronics in it? Damn it is useless.
That’s because you forgot oil lobbying, effectively blocking all research on electricity as a mean of transportation instead of gasoline for decades. People don’t buy what’s better for them (just think to the De Beers’ diamond cartel): they buy what’s popular and heavily portrayed through publicity. You sure either ignore, either don’t know about the EV-1’s case. That’s not because it was “bad” that electric cars kept the same effective range for almost a century without evolving; that’s because of oil companies. They buy all technology menacing their enormous business and then just make it disappear. Intense publicity, political influence and oil lobbying. Yes, definitively capitalism 101.
CT news feed:
33% cities and countries banning ICE
33% new EV cars/concepts/startups
33% funny videos
1% new petrol cars
I ain’t complaining
100% complaining
And they wonder why I no longer come here :’(
They’re clearly forgetting the pollution involved with mining the lithium for the batteries and the pollution from the power stations to make the electricity in the first place
Yeah, good thing that building ICEs, hydraulic fracking and refining oil to petrol doesn’t hurt the environment at all. Or does it?
Yeah, and another issue is that it literally destroys the earth mining, and will kill lots of wildlife because of unfathomably large deforestation. It doesn’t matter if the air is clean if no one can live.
The only people who believe lithium extraction has significant pollution are sheep who get spoonfed by Big Oil propaganda. 95% of all lithium is extracted from solar evaporated brine water. In case you are wondering, this is the same way sea salt is made with the only exception being that lithium brine water is pumped from underground reserves under dry lakebeds.
There’s a reason EVs are being popularised. Very well funded and educated people have deeply researched the feasibility of EVs and whether they are better for the environment than ICE vehicles. The electricity production, lithium mining and overall transport of goods to create an ev gives considerably harm to the environment. But I see what you are saying. No matter what manufacturers say, EVs will never be completely “pollution-free”
Oxford - the anti-car city of Britain. Even for a long time.
Felt very weird upvoting this post
I hope the government plans to invest in electric vans and trucks, and helping businesses in Oxford financially with sourcing their expensive new vehicles. Would be nice if Hydrogen fueled vehicles (being zero emmision) were allowed.
Failing that, if businesses start to leave Oxford because it wouldn’t make financial sense for them to overhaul their delivery systems to account for a single area, maybe rent prices in Oxford will drop to a slightly less horrendous level
Edit: Will this ban include construction vehicles and power generators? If so, that could make any construction/demolition work in Oxford quite entertaining to witness
Not this kind of news again 😐
UK: we are banning new ICE car sales by 2040!
Paris: hold my croissant. ..
-bans ICE cars by 2030
Oxford: hold my dictionary…
-bans ICE by 2020.
I don’t know about the UK or Oxford, but I can 100% assure Paris needs it. BADLY. My German friends who came over had actually sore throats during the summer days from the intense pollution
How forward thinking of them! Especially considering the technology that it will take to make this happen isn’t 2.5 years out from production. You stupid libs enjoy having UPS and Fed Ex deliver via tri-cycle. I wonder how they will supply stores with necessities?
Really need to bring politics in there as well?