E or H2?
The BBC's chief environment correspondent, Justin Rowlatt, tells us Why it's the end of the road for petrol stations.
You are writing the risk assessment for a new petrol station. You want to dig a big hole in the ground in the middle of town, put in some tanks and fill them up with an enormous amount of highly flammable fuel. Then you're proposing to attach a really powerful pump and invite in random members of the public. They'll arrive in vehicles with hot engines. You'll hand them the really powerful pump that sprays the highly flammable liquid. Without any supervision they'll use it to transfer large quantities of the highly flammable liquid into their hot vehicle, they'll pay you and drive off. Are you OK to sign off on that? Do you think Health and Safety will give it the green light? My point is that fuelling cars with petrol and diesel is dangerous, which is why we do it at specially-designed centralised refuelling points.
Justin Rowlatt, chief environment correspondent, BBC News
The counterpoint to this, of course, is that it's already been done. People have been safely refuelling cars for decades. So his point is somewhat…pointless.
It's a moot point though. Our correspondent predicts a death spiral
for petrol stations, at least as we know them. Since HMG has banned the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2030, the move away from fossil fuels is inevitable. So, the prediction is fairly safe, at least in terms of the UK, if not flat-out obvious.
His thesis, however, is based solely on electric vehicles (EV) as the future replacement for petrol and diesel. Personally, I'm not in favour of EV, for numerous specious reasons, but primarily because I think that Elon Musk's a cunt. And I don't like batteries; or, rather, their reliability to diminish in capacity over time. Plus, they're relatively heavy, so driving them around isn't exactly energy-efficient. And Elon Musk's a cunt.
I'm holding out for hydrogen fuel cell technology to become viable. I think it's cleaner, sexier, and Elon Muskless. What's not to like?