15 March

I know a deeply committed ‘motoring enthusiast’. What George Monbiot calls a ‘boy racer’, which better captures the psychology. The guys (though also women, but less often) whose actual identity as a person is heavily based on their vehicles, since the time they were teenagers. Their vehicle is like their Ken and Barbie set, but for adolescents. He constantly tells me I need to ‘trade-up’ back to a petrol engine. I tell him I’m not really into slow, noisy cars that cost a fortune to maintain and run. Something he said the other day was a real window into the psychology, he said ‘me and my mates will never buy an electric car’. It’s a group thing. It gives him membership of a social group. ‘Me and my mates’. It’s not, despite what he says, any greater appreciation of the engineering of cars, or even driving. His car floods in the boot when it rains, the air con won’t work and many mornings he takes his wife’s car because his modded chariot won’t even start. On the flip side, I’m not into EVs because I want to be part of some EV owners social group, like ‘Tesla fanboys’. I hate all that stuff, passionately. I’m not a teenager. I like EVs because they’re brilliant engineering, which makes them the most brilliant cars to drive as well. I like knowledge, especially when blended with material things.