Electromobility.
Electromobility - ostensibly a topic of the last few years, but actually an ideological trend that has been richly debated since the early millennium. The very issue of the choice of propulsion of means of transport emerged much earlier. The possibility of powering cars with electricity was seriously discussed more than a century ago. Belgian Camille Jenatzy built an electric car of his own design and set a then speed record of 105.3 km/h in April 1899. And he was far from the only one who saw a future in the use of electricity. At the beginning of the automotive era, electric cars stood alongside the then hard-to-start fossil-fuel cars, and the odds were evenly stacked against them for dominance. But cheap oil and technical improvements to internal combustion engines won out. Electric motors therefore cleared the field and became more prevalent in public transport and especially on the railways. In other words, the battle for the automobile market was won by the then economic advantages of the internal combustion engine, successful lobbying and the tantalisingly intoxicating odour of diesel.
The present brings new challenges, perspectives and ambiguities in this area. The European Commission has published its plan not to allow the sale of internal combustion engine cars within the European Union from 2035 onwards. And some passages of the EC proposal are even more radical. Reading and listening to reports on this subject, I cannot help feeling that the whole concept of the massive introduction of electromobility has no comprehensible economic or environmental basis. The relevant questions, to which there are only sketchy and therefore insufficient answers, appear to be, for example, the prediction of an increase in the price of electricity in connection with rising demand, the generally high price of new electric cars, the system for disposing of problematic waste at the end of the life of electric cars and their components, the continuity of European trends with the approach to the problem on other continents and, last but not least, the unfinished discussion on the relative environmental impact of internal combustion engines. It is worth noting here that the production of nitrogen oxides and, in particular, sulphur oxides has other champions than current passenger cars. For potential advocates of rapid and dramatic change in this area, there are more legitimate questions than intelligible answers in the public domain so far.