China has banned hidden car door handles on safety grounds, making it the first country to crack down on a design popularised by Tesla. But if we’re now banning features on electric cars, can I also suggest that we get rid of the power bar which tells us, in percentage terms, how much charge is left in the battery?
I recently spent a week test-driving the electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, and loved it. Faster than many a Porsche, it can drift like a Mazda RX-7, can produce engine noises to rival a Maserati, can simulate the kind of dual-clutch transmission you find in a Golf R, and is the first electric car I’ve ever driven that is actual fun. But like all such vehicles, it has an indicator on the dashboard telling you precisely how much juice remains, and the precision of it accentuates the biggest anxiety about electric cars — range.
In petrol cars, you’re only ever vaguely aware of how much fuel you have left, to such a degree that sometimes you can run on “empty” for 50 miles. In electric cars, however, you are being informed, by the second, about how every hill, every acceleration, every use of the air conditioning and heated seats, is depleting your energy.
The precision of it all focuses your mind on a problem that might not actually be a problem. EV manufacturers need to learn that ignorance is bliss.
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Good triumphs again
I was travelling across London on another mode of transport, the bicycle, when I lost my phone, complete with four credit cards and £150 inserted in the case. I was 21 minutes into retracing my journey, while cursing myself for my stupidity, when I got an email informing me that it had been found and could be returned.
The far right are obsessed with painting our capital as a crime-ridden hellhole, with the help of fake AI videos, but it’s not my experience at all. Yes, I’ve had two phones stolen during my 30 years in London, but I’ve also had wallets returned three times and had phones quickly handed back twice. In my experience, people always rush to help in emergencies or if a young parent is struggling with a pram on stairs.
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The good feeling continued when I went to pick up my property from the kind soul who had happened across it by the kerb, one Susan Cohen. This lovely woman turned out to be a historian and, in the absence of her accepting a reward, I felt the least I could do by way of thanks was to read her book, Rescue the Perishing.
It was not, as I initially hoped, about people who had lost their phones around London but about the extraordinary Eleanor Rathbone (1872-1946), from Liverpool, a city which gets even more unfair press than London.
The first female independent MP elected to parliament, Rathbone was an early suffragette and champion of the poor. She fought hard for the establishment of child benefit and worked tirelessly throughout the early part of the Second World War to bring the plight of refugees in Nazi-occupied Europe (especially Jewish ones), to the attention of the world.
What a legacy! Don’t believe social media. People, including Londoners and Liverpudlians, are good.
Passing problem
I was blown away, and a little frightened, when I had my first experience of self-driving cars in Florida over Christmas. But I cannot see how the technology could possibly work in Britain. It’s not just the twistiness of our roads but the incomprehensibility of our roundabouts and the ancientness of our country lanes that will prove a challenge for computers, but there’s also the impenetrable etiquette.
There is, for example, an extremely busy zebra crossing near Granary Square in King’s Cross that always has pedestrians streaming across it. As a result, there’s always a long queue of traffic waiting for people to pass.
The only way motorists eventually manage to move is by gently driving towards the human beings while offering profuse apologies throughout in the form of elaborate hand gestures and nods. I’ve seen Waymo self-driving taxis being tested on the streets of London, but I just cannot imagine technology being able to mimic this uniquely British combination of theatrical politeness and semi-homicidal aggression.
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