Richard Hammond has criticised the UK's electric vehicle roadmap, warning that it would be "idiotic" for some drivers to replace petrol and diesel cars with EVs. The former Top Gear presenter said spending thousands on new electric cars could lead to losses as the technology depreciates and becomes outdated.
He suggested politicians should look more closely at synthetic fuels, which he said could keep "billions of cars on the road" without requiring a switch to electric vehicles. Hammond made the comments on a new episode of Jake Humphrey's High Performance podcast, released last week.
Synthetic fuels as an alternative
Speaking on the show, Hammond explained how synthetic fuel could be produced. He said: "I regularly sit in pubs and say to people, 'Oh yeah, synthetic fuel … we can make petrol.' 'What, with oil?' No, you just capture carbon, which you can capture direct from source, manufacturing, the ethanol industry produces a lot of it.
"Capture it at the chimney, you've got your carbon. Hydrogen you crack using renewable energy from water. Combine them, you've got hydrocarbon, that's petrol, and 1.4 billion cars can stay on the road and don't have to be remade."
He also questioned the resources needed for a full electric transition, saying: "'We've all got to go electric'. Where are the resources going to come from? We're going to cede global power entirely to China. [EVs] don't work in many applications."
UK policy differs from EU
Europe has already adopted changes, with the EU's petrol and diesel car ban including an exemption for new combustion engine vehicles that run exclusively on carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. The UK has not adopted this approach, with officials maintaining that the sale of new petrol and diesel models will end by 2030, with a short window for hybrid sales until 2035.
Hammond warned that depreciation on electric models should make many drivers hold off on making the switch at this stage. He added: "I'm a big fan of electric cars – but the technology is moving at such a rate, telling some 25-year-old who lives in a town and does 3,000 miles a year, you've got to go and find £45,000 to spend on a Kia now, electric, that you won't be able to charge out of your house, and it will be worth £10,000 next year when the technology's completely outdated, is idiotic.
"Actually saying to them, best thing you could do is go and buy a Mk2 Fiesta. You'll be really cool and retro, get it fully restored, if you can run it on synthetic, that is the greenest thing you can do."
