Easy on the eye, rather tougher on the wallet
The Clarkson Review: Peugeot e-208 (Nov. 1)
The problem with the Tesla, and all the other electric cars from Jaguar, Porsche and BMW, is that they're trying to be cars. When, of course, they are not cars. They are auxiliary transport solutions.
I'm sure it would be possible to make an electric dog that could be programmed to bark at burglars and lie by the fire on chilly evenings. But would it be an actual dog? Would you want to tickle it behind its ears and take it for walks? No.
According to a dictionary on Google, a car is "a road vehicle, typically with four wheels, powered by an internal combustion engine and able to carry a small number of people". And the key in that is "internal combustion engine". Replace it with an electric motor and what you're left with is a module for moving around. Not a "car".
A fridge freezer is not powered by internal combustion, which is why you have not given yours a name. There are no magazines called
What Fridge Freezer? or
Performance Fridge Freezer. There is no sadness when you have to throw your fridge freezer away and buy a new one. You do not talk with friends in the pub about the latest innovations in the world of fridge freezers, and no one meets on a Sunday morning to reminisce about classic fridge freezers of yesteryear.
The engine is a car's heart and soul. It's where the personality comes from. Take it away and what you're left with is a husk.
It's been argued that soon everyone will be using electric transportation husks, and that cars will suffer the same fate as horses when people stopped using them as tools. They'll become playthings for enthusiasts, stabled in heated garages, hacked out on sunny days for fun. And raced occasionally by tiny men.
But this isn't happening. People maybe growing increasingly concerned about the world's unusual weather, yet, despite all sorts of financial incentives, electric models account for a small proportion of the UK car market.
That's because the car-makers have got it into their heads that an electric car should be like a proper car. Only more expensive. And, as a result of their limited range and problematic "refuelling", a damn nuisance. A friend of mine drove her Tesla to the south of France this summer and spent so long sitting in cafés while it charged up that, when she arrived in Antibes, she weighed more than it did.
I've said for a while now that electrically powered transport husks should be modelled on the simple little yellow Jeep your kids had when they were small. One-wheel drive. And no need for brakes because it could do only 3mph. Happily, Citroën seems to have realised this and has launched a model called the Ami, which is now revolutionising the way people move around Paris.
It does not pretend to be a car.
It doesn't even try to look like one.
It's a box with four wheels, a small electric motor and a plastic moulded interior that will be familiar to anyone who has used the bathroom in a HotelF1 room.
As a result of all this the French government does not label the Ami a car. It deems it to be a quadricycle, which means it can be driven by 14-year-olds if they have a moped licence. Is it safe? Compared with a Volvo probably not, but as it has a top speed of just 28mph you'll never really be going fast enough to do yourself any serious damage.
It costs €6,900, or about £6,265, and has a range, apparently, of more than 40 miles. That seems low, but as this is meant to be a city-centre device — a sort of two-seat Boris bike — it's plenty. I think it's a very clever idea, and full marks to Citroën for thinking of it.
Interestingly, however, Citroën's other half, Peugeot, is sticking resolutely to the idea that electric cars should be actual cars but with a different sort of propulsion unit. Which is why it sent round some kind of battery-powered 208 hatchback for me to try.
It's a good-looking little thing, and for a moment I thought maybe Peugeot had tried to reinvent the 205 GTI, but I was in for two disappointments on that front. The first disappointment was on getting in. For reasons I can't understand Peugeot has decided drivers want to look at the instruments over the top of the steering wheel, not through it. This means the wheel is mounted so low I had a real struggle getting my leg under it. And when I finally managed, I couldn't see the instruments at all.
Then came the next disappointment. I pushed the start button and was rewarded with a health-and-safety notice that I couldn't read, partly because I wasn't wearing my spectacles, but mostly because I didn't know it was there. The steering wheel was in the way.
Also, I didn't know the motor hadn't started, because in an electric car there's no aural clue. Nor can you tell when you've turned it off. Although if you try to get out without first applying the handbrake, the Peugeot sounds the sort of alarm you'd expect to hear on a sinking submarine.
Eventually, though, I got everything working and pushed the gearlever backwards twice, which is what you must do to make the car go forwards, and off we went.
To be fair, it's quite a nice little car to drive. The steering is entirely lacking in feel, which is dreary, but it's smooth over even the biggest bumps, it's quiet and, at 8.1 seconds, it's quicker from 0 to 62mph than the original Golf GTI. What's more, it is spacious, has a big boot and is an appealing place to sit.
There are lots of alternatives out there from Renault and VW and Vauxhall (which is a Peugeot as well these days). Honda will also be joining the fray, although its car does at most 137 miles between charges, against the Peugeot's 217 miles, and that's not enough. Which is best? Well, if you have thin legs and are a sucker for good looks, it's probably the little Peugeot.
However, before you rush off to buy one, consider this. Peugeot has done its best to muddy the waters, but, after an hour or two on its website, I reckon that when the £3,000 government plug-in grant has been factored into the equation, the electric GT costs just over £30,000. And you can have the same thing, but with a petrol engine, for about £10,000 less than that.
Plus, of course, to make the batteries for your electrical husk, mining companies in Russia and Canada will be wreaking environmental havoc. Acid rain. Entire river systems ruined. And that's before we get to the problem of child labour in those cobalt mines in Africa.
Yes, it maybe less good for the climate to buy a car with a petrol engine, and you maybe sneered at by your annoyingly right-on children, but at least you end up with a car.
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The moon is awash with cold water. Let's tap it — and pour it on the lunatics dreaming of Mars (Nov. 01)
Ever since Apollo 17 commander Eugene Cernan stepped back on board the lunar module Challenger, fired up the rocket and took off from the surface of the moon on December 14, 1972, we have been assured that, one day, man will be back.
John F Kennedy was the first to use lunar exploration as a political tool. "We choose to go to the moon ... and do the other things," the president bellowed, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Good speech. Even though we never did find out what he meant by "the other things".
Later, George HW Bush pledged that America would go back to the moon, as did his son George W. A few years after that, Barack Obama announced he wanted Americans to land on an asteroid, and then came Donald Trump, who wanted to build a wall and go to Mars. Which, though Donald probably doesn't realise this, means we have to go to the moon first.
The reason for that is simple. It took only eight days for Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to get to the moon and back, but — even though they weren't going for long and they weren't taking much with them and their capsule was not much bigger than a Mini Metro — they needed a rocket that was taller than the Statue of Liberty to get them into space; a rocket that used 20 tons of fuel a second at launch and produced more horsepower than 160,000 new Ferraris.
Now. Getting people to Mars would take nine months. So they would have to take all they needed for an 18-month round trip, not counting the time they'd actually spend in the freezing hell of the red planet.
And think about that. When you go to the beach for two weeks, your suitcase is so heavy you can't even carry it. They would need enough lavatory paper, blankets, washing powder, spare clothes, food, shampoo, sanitary products, Jack Reacher books, phone chargers and bedding to last for more than a year.
And, because we are way beyond the idea of going to other planets to leave flags and footsteps, they would also have to take a ton of scientific equipment to make the journey worthwhile. They would, therefore, need a spaceship so big they'd require a rocket the size of Africa to get it off the ground. And, the fact is, we don't have one like that.
Rather than wait for such a thing to be developed, which would take about 50 million years, it would be much better to set off from the moon, which has only a sixth of the Earth's gravity. So, to break free and get on your way, even if you were in a ship the size of an articulated lorry, you would only need the sort of whizz-bang rocket that Standard sold you on Bonfire Night.
That's why the discovery last week of water on the bright side of the moon is so important. I have no idea how the men who went there 51 years ago missed it, or how it's never been spotted by the Hubble, but whatever — boffins flew a specially modified jumbo jet high above almost all the water vapour on Earth and a telescope mounted in the aircraft's open door spotted it. Tons of the stuff. A veritable moon river. More water than you'd find in the whole of the Kennet and Avon canal.
So now astronauts could take off from Earth and go to the moon, which we know is possible. And there they could collect all the water they'd need for the onward journey. And I've just thought of something else. They could even use solar energy to convert it into rocket fuel.
But what about using the water to grow stuff? Hmm. That's trickier. Last year the Chinese announced they had landed a capsule on the far side of the moon and that the potatoes, fruit-fly eggs and rapeseed inside it had all died. This was not surprising. Rapeseed is hard enough to grow on Earth.
But they did say that the cotton seeds had begun to sprout, giving hope that the astronauts would be able to grow their own bedsheets and trousers. Sadly, though, the next day, the Chinese scientists were forced to admit the cotton had died as well. Which isn't surprising, given the temperature on this part of the moon is as low as -173C.
Anyway, all this means we are a long way from growing cows up there, or hens. Or anything.
It seems to me there are other issues too. Because in order to launch a spaceship from the surface of the moon, you would need a tower with retractable gantries, and lots of hoses, and a factory to make the fuel and a hotel where visiting astronauts could stay while preparing for the second leg to Mars. In short, you'd need a moon base.
We already know we don't have the power to get a few gallons of water up there, so how do we transport what's basically the whole of Cape Canaveral and Houston?
And how do we pay for it? It costs as much as $100,000 to blast a kilogram of mass into space, according to Nasa, so each lamb the astronauts ate up there would cost about $2m. Even a laptop would be 80 grand.
We couldn't possibly afford it, and even if we could, we don't have the technology to make it feasible. Or the will, because if somebody died in training, you just know there would be deafening calls to scrap the whole thing.
It isn't going to happen, then. We are not going back to the moon and we are not going to Mars, and America's presidents should learn to accept that so they can concentrate instead on doing "the other things" that Kennedy talked about.
Such as inventing an iPhone cable that doesn't become all tangled up seconds after you've folded it neatly and put it in your office drawer.
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And here's the Sun column: "
Death may be natural…but ruining lives by mistake isn’t"