People will go for anything they don’t understand, if it’s got enough hype– Miles Davis, an American jazz musician (1926-1991)
Isn’t it a riot how we twist and turn words like soft pretzels to fit our own narratives and make sense of the world? Welcome to this wild circus where we’re all performers.
Taking the centre stage first is our star attraction, nuclear energy. Imagine it as the leading star in a grand show, promising a brighter future. But here’s the catch — it’s not as renewable as we’d hope. The process of extracting it is about as environmentally friendly as trying to grow a sunflower in a rusty old oil drum.
Just the other day in Singapore, an investment banker, with a smile as wide as a Cheshire cat, shared an interesting tidbit – a single kilogramme of uranium can kick out as much energy as a 2.7 million kilogramme of coal.
Just like that, we slap a green sticker on it. But let’s not forget, if things go south like they did in Chernobyl, we might end up with not one, not two, but three countries glowing like an eternal nightlight. That little twist even made my friend Heng, a bigshot at Greenpeace, choked on his organic green tea.
Now let’s shift our focus to another star of the show, the electric vehicle (EV). These rides are the crowd’s sweetheart, with their emissions as silent as a mouse. Let’s remember that to keep these cars running, you need batteries. Mind you, we’re not talking about those ordinary AA batteries that bring your TV remote to life, no siree!
To feed these power-hungry vehicles, we need to go on mining operations so vast, you could sculpt a small-scale model of Mount Everest with the surplus. Buckle up for this: to produce a single EV battery, we have to plunge deep into the Earth’s crust, mining a mind-boggling 226.8 tonnes of it. I’ve witnessed this operation firsthand in South Africa, and let me tell you, it’s like digging a hole so enormous that you could conceal an entire house within it, all in the pursuit of finding a single precious gem. And what are we digging for? Heavy metals like nickel, lithium, cobalt, manganese, and copper. Now that’s a stark reality check, isn’t it?
All this effort for what? Cleaner air? Well, not exactly. What we’re really after is to chop down our carbon dioxide (CO2) numbers. It’s kind of funny how we keep chasing one solution, when there’s a whole menu of options right in front of us. I mean, in economics, the term “substitutable” simply means swapping sugar for honey in your grandma’s famous cake recipe – you end up with a similarly sweet treat, just got there by a slightly different route.
If we really think about it, our main goal isn’t to completely redo the wheel, or in this case, the whole car. We shouldn’t be striving to replace fuel tanks, engines, transmission systems, gearboxes, and all the intricate components that make up a conventional vehicle. If the solution to our carbon crisis involves constructing towering seawalls or cranking the air conditioning to Arctic levels, then let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work, shall we? After all, who needs a precise solution when we can simply explore various options and see what sticks? Let’s allow the market to roam freely and stumble upon the most efficient and sustainable path.
Humans are such inventive beings, aren’t they? It’s truly awe-inspiring to witness their ingenious ideas. Take my visit to the Mazda Corporation’s Ujina plant in Japan back in 2017, for instance. While the rest of the world was fixated on EVs, Mazda boldly introduced their groundbreaking advancement in internal combustion engine technology, known as Skyactive-X. Such a brilliant example of innovation, don’t you think?
In the midst of all this nonsensical chaos, our dear ministers joyfully announced in the budget 2023 that Malaysia was all set to throw bones to the EV industry. Can you even begin to make sense of it? The ridiculousness hits a new high when Putrajaya seems to suffer from selective memory loss. Since November, they appear to have been sipping on a powerful forget-me-now drink, conveniently overlooking the fact that EVs are shiny toys for the wealthy.
Ah, the fuel subsidy, a subject that has sparked more laughs than a stand-up routine by Jocelyn Chia and rang up a jaw-dropping RM77 billion tab last year, has fired up heated debates about money being thrown in all the wrong places.. The twist is that the lion’s share of this subsidy is being gobbled up by the fancy top 10 per cent, those with flashy SUVs and glamorous MPVs. Looks like the whole “no subsidies for the wealthy” storyline went up in smoke, huh?
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more absurd, the government now plans to pile on even more absurdity by offering additional bones to the already well-off EV owners. They seem blissfully unaware that these generous exemptions – no road tax, no import duty, no excise duty, no sales tax – are nothing more than lavish gifts to these luxurious rides, transforming our economy into a big, hilarious joke.
Wait, there’s more! Despite this riotous parade of giveaways, the cheapest EV in Malaysia, whether it’s CBU or CKD, still carries a heart-stopping price tag of RM139,800. That’s a sky-high 7.7 times the annual minimum income and 2.5 times more than the average income per person in Malaysia in 2021. Now, doesn’t that sound bonkers to you?
And here’s the cherry on top, EV sales in Malaysia rocketed up by 860 per cent, jumping to 2,631 units in 2022 compared to 2021, and that’s without all these extra candies. And if my calculations are correct, it seems they’re projected to skyrocket even further this year. It’s unbelievable, I must say.
One can’t help but ponder who’s really raking in the rewards from the taxes vacuumed out of your hard-earned wages. The least expensive EV, the oddly named “Ora Good Cat” (which, by the way, is not a brand of cat food but a car from China’s Great Wall Motor Co Ltd), is no larger than a Perodua MyVi.
With the amount of money you would have to fork over for an Ora, you could drive off with three MyVis, and still have enough change to start a cat sanctuary with a dozen felines. And believe me, the fact that I’m pointing this out without a single cent from Perodua jingling in my pocket just goes to show how incredibly absurd the whole situation is.
