Putting a positive gloss on the news is especially important as we attempt to recover from a pandemic.  And if that positive gloss is green in colour, so much the better. And so yesterday we were treated to the news that:

“More electric vehicles were registered than diesel cars for the second month in a row in July, according to car industry figures.  It is the third time battery electric vehicles have overtaken diesel in the past two years.”

That is surely great news.  But as is usually the case in matters green, we are starting from a very low position.  Much more will have to be done to raise the number of battery-only EVs from the current nine percent of registrations in 2021 to the planned 100 percent by 2035.  Moreover, the current nine percent is a share of a dramatically depressed new car market… which is the real headline news in this story.

Nobody is actively covering this up; but they are playing it down.  According to the BBC piece which celebrates the rise in EV sales:

“However, new car registrations fell by almost a third…”

Insofar as the wellbeing or otherwise of the car industry has been a measure of the health of the wider economy throughout the oil age, a 29.5 percent collapse in new car sales ought to have been given far more prominence.  This is particularly true insofar as this year’s decline comes on the back of the massive lockdown-decline in 2020:

Instead we are treated to several implausible explanations for why this is nothing to worry about.  First, we are told, the decline is the result of people no longer wanting to buy diesel cars.  Certainly, there has been a collapse in demand for diesels in the wake of the Volkswagen scandal and government increases in tax on diesel vehicles…

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