SIR – As someone who works in energy distribution and is helping prepare for the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) Mr Parr’s letter (PowerPoint No 2, February 13) highlights that the biggest barrier in the move to EVs may not be designing the vehicles, or engineering the infrastructure required to charge them, but informing and educating those that cannot currently imagine a world without the internal combustion engine. 

It’s difficult to address all Mr Parr’s points in one short letter, as unfortunately every one of them is wholly mistaken and utterly inaccurate.

So I will address the main one asking “from where this power will come?”. The issue is not so much from “where” the power will come, as from “when” it will come.

The UK’s electricity demand currently follows a daily cycle with periods of very high and very low demand.

Electricity generators must therefore have enough generation capacity to meet the peaks even though later in the day there will be a demand trough.

As EV owners tend to charge their cars overnight and electricity suppliers are offering variable tariffs to incentivise this by make charging at night cheaper and in doing so help spread demand.

In addition new “Vehicle to Grid” chargers EV owners to sell electricity back to the grid from their car battery at a higher price when demand is high

I’d like to let Mr Parr know that rather than a group of “Greens” with a “complete lack of global knowledge” preparing the transition to EVs in a way that “has not been thought through” many of the brightest and best engineers and designers in the world have been working on the issue for over 15 years.

Andy Martyr-Icke

Evesham