The South African economy post covid-19 is in the doldrums, unemployment is at record high levels and the South African carbon emissions are well above acceptable international levels. Traffic congestion and road crashes are a crippling economic burden.
It must be agreed that these are all serious problems. ‘Yes’, but look on the bright side, “any problem is an opportunity. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity”. ( Vinod Khosla)
Future Transport Consultants, Hansen and Miller see this as a big opportunity for South Africa. They believe there is a synergy between these issues which can be addressed simultaneously. Therein lies the opportunity.
Hansen and Miller’s Patrick Hansen, a motor racing and transport engineer worked in South Africa during the 1970s. He won the 1978 Formula Ford championship with Mike Hoffman and travelled to England to engineer race cars for South Africa’s Basil Mann. For the next ten years he worked extensively in the U.K.’s motor manufacturing industry. With over fifty years’ experience in the industry, Patrick has a clear vision for the future of transport.
Patrick Hansen, a New Zealander, is in South Africa with a transport solution. A solution that will address South Africa’s economic, environmental and transport problems simultaneously. These problems are not unique to South Africa, they are global, therefore this represents a global opportunity.
Nowhere in the world has a viable solution been found to tackle these problems. The world is being sold down the river believing that electric cars are the solution. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to realise that electric cars are just cars. They will not solve the congestion or accident problems and the environmental advantages are dubious to say the least.
In South Africa where the majority of electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels it would be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.
A significant reduction in carbon emissions from the transport sector is called for to overcome the threat of more frequent environmental disasters. If any country is seriously interested in combatting climate change there are some realities that will need to be faced up to.
How much environmental damage is caused by transport? It is not just tailpipe emissions from cars. It needs to be understood that these problems run far deeper than that.
The cycle of making cars starts with raw materials being extracted from the ground, refined, transported and manufactured into the thousands of components required to produce the car. This process will produce the same amount of carbon emissions as the car will during its driven life. Disposing of the car will contribute even more.
If the electricity used to charge cars comes from the burning of fossil fuels, it doesn’t matter if electric cars are not polluting while being driven, as this pollution has already been released in some distant power plant.
The opportunity to significantly reduce transport’s contribution to global warming and climate change is being presented by Hansen and Miller.
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