Well, you’ve got to hand it to the PR firm that did Better Place’s publicity. Not only did they get their client on the Today Show, the story went global in the New York Times. And, on the face of it, their project sounds great. There are four big problems with the electric car: even the best batteries give a relatively short maximum range, they take a long time to recharge, there’s no infrastructure for recharging on the go, and the batteries are expensive. Better Place hopes to overcome these problems with a three-pronged (if you’ll pardon the pun) approach; a network of “recharge points” where you can plug your electric car in and recharge while parked, battery swapover stations that allow you to physically swap batteries in a couple of minutes if you’re on a trip and don’t have time for a recharge, and the financial machinery so that you pay for the service, rather than buying batteries outright.
The plan is plausible enough at the technical level. The Nissan-Renault alliance is planning to have full-electric vehicles available by around 2011 or so; reports vary on the range of the vehicles, but something around 160 kilometres is plausible. A number of battery manufacturers are building factories to churn the requisite lithium-ion cells out, and the projected battery durability is good enough to make the things practical. And recharge stations and battery swapover points are pretty simple exercises. So, in the longer term, I reckon this company is on to something along the lines of the right concept. Battery tech is already good enough to provide plausible city cars, and it improves every year. We already know of a number of ways to generate zero-emission electricity. And the battery leasing model takes a lot of the risk out of an electric car for the purchaser.
In the short term, however, there are very good reasons to be skeptical of large-scale electric vehicle rollout schemes; and lots of reasons to expect the companies involved to have their hand out to government.
The first thing to keep in mind is that, even if the first Nissan-Renault EVs start appearing on Australian roads in 2012, they will be in extremely limited numbers; it will take several years after that to gear up production. Given the limited numbers, it’s hard to see a large rollout of charging infrastructure any time soon, unless the corporate backers are happy to have squads of recharging stations seeing bugger-all use for several years. Achieving useful coverage outside the inner suburbs of the east coast cities is going to take a while; outside the metro areas, I doubt you’d be do a cross-country trip unless you took either the Hume or Pacific highways.
Furthermore, in the short term the batteries are going to be very, very expensive. Battery costs for EV’s is a fairly closely guarded secret right now, but informed specuation puts the price of the Chevrolet Volt’s battery at over 5000 USD. That’s to push a car roughly 60 kilometres. A full EV, with a 160 kilometre range, will have a battery pack worth at least 10,000 USD – or (at least as of writing, who knows where the currency will be in an hour or two), something like 16,000 Australian dollars. Even ignoring wear and tear on the battery, and assuming $2/liter petrol, that’s 8,000 liters, easily enough to drive 100,000 urban kilometres in something like a Toyota Yaris. Even assuming that the electricity to charge the battery is free, it’s not something you’d do for financial reasons just yet! Yes, the financial engineering means you won’t pay for the battery upfront, but it ultimately has to be paid for, and the cost eventually makes its way back to the vehicle user. No amount of financial wizardary can avoid that!
The cost, and life, of these battery packs also calls substantially into question another touted benefit of electric vehicles – using them to smooth out the balance between demand and supply in a renewable energy-powered electricity grid. While I can’t find the link, somebody from AGL – one of the partners in this project – gave a radio interview claiming that they could feed energy from the batteries back into the grid if needed. Not with 10,000 USD batteries you won’t; the wear and tear on the batteries will cost them more than the power’s worth. They could presumably charge at off-peak times when there’s an excess of power, but feeding back into the grid is, from everything I’ve read so far, only going to work as a substitute for Spinning reserve in the short-to-medium term.
Given all that, you’d have to think that in the short term that the market for pure electric vehicles will be small; too small to justify billion-dollar outlays for charging infrastructure. Macquarie Bank, AGL, and Renault-Nissan (these days, a cross-held corporate alliance) aren’t known as charities, so if they intend to make a buck out of the process money will have to come from somewhere else. In Israel, Better Place’s first target country, that somewhere else is government support, direct and indirect. Israel charges a 72 percent tax on conventional vehicles, but only 10 percent on electrics. If people are going to buy electric cars in Australia for financial reasons, similarly drastic differences in government treatment will be required, far beyond what emissions trading will offer.
If I were a government minister receiving a visit from Better Place and its partners for some kind of government incentive, I’d look very long and hard at the environmental benefits we’ll get for the dough they’re asking for. Just like solar panels, I’d expect the answer to come back – lots of money for bugger-all environmental gains. And that should be the bottom line, not slick PR campaigns that suck in a gullible mainstream media.
I have a cunning plan….
Ive always wondered why the batteries in electric cars have to be “built in”. Wouldnt it make more sense to have swap out models, so going to a servo would involve the battery unit being removed and a fully charged one slotted in, all done semi-auto?? That would at least get rid of some of the complaints about charging times?
The fully electric car is good for shot trips, thats what it should be sold for. Its not made for longer ones. Its like complaining a glider wont fly me to Bali…
Mole – that’s precisely what they’re proposing to do.
However, it doesn’t take much of a trip to really start pushing the limits of electric cars. I took some Chinese visitors to our university for a day trip to Healesville Sanctuary.
Round trip? 170 kilometres.
When you’ve got a choice between a $15,000 car that can do such trips, and a $30,000 one that won’t, you’d have to be a very committed environmentalist to buy the $30,000 one. Even more so when for a fraction of the price you could avoid more emissions by buying offsets.
Robert,
Limited range may be a problem if you have only one car, but a short range electric is a fantastic option for a two car household.
Also, you don’t avoid emissions by buying offsets. You just hope the money you spent causes the CO2 to be sucked back up again.
Baron: depends on the offset.
Low-cost offsets from tree planting programs work that way, but they’re dodgy.
The better offset programs involve things like flaring methane from landfills or purchasing renewable energy, both of which directly displace greenhouse emissions.
Robert,
At some time in the (near?) future, we’ll have to give up “buying offsets” and actually reduce real emissions. How soon do you think that’ll be?
In the meantime, if we pay irrigators to become ex-irrigators, why not subsidise the first round of electric cars? If we hang around waiting for the ideal, we could be waiting decades. My crappy-and-dirty preference is to go for some of these “second-rate” options immediately [in next 2 years say], to get the balls rolling, to head in the right direction, and to actually REDUCE some emissions.
Fuel and electricity prices can change swiftly. (water prices too!) Don’t wait for those changes, build in a buffer now.
Surely pluggable hybrids are the way to go as an interim measure? Toyota seems to think so.
One of the problems with this “everyone mostly does short trips, so why not have an electric car for these short trips” idea is that, as you rightly point out, people also need cars for the occasional long trip too.
So you either make it possible for people to afford two cars when they used to use just one with some sort of rental/lease scheme for the electric vehicle, or you make the car capable of longer trips if need be. Then you’re back at the pluggable hybrid.
I know I link to this every time, but I don’t see the shortness of the range as a downside. It’s not how far you go, it’s how fast you get there.
Thanks again for another of your clear-eyed posts, Robert.
But I think the thing that’s missing from this analysis is the political angle. New technology plays like this have to be pitched in a political sense – what do we think can capture the public imagination enough to shift entrenched habits. And politics is, of course, the art of the possible.
If one accepts that car transport is here to stay (and despite being all for real public transport options, I do) then where are the low-emissions alternatives? Cost-effective or otherwise?
Yes, like PVs, this scheme may not stack up financially in the first stages of its development – and any but the most misty-eyed venture captitalist will probably stay well away from it. But real change in private transport habits is pure gold for any government embarking on genuine post-Kyoto emission reduction targets. It’ll upset the bean-counters in the short term but stiff bickies for them.
The public spectacle of charging posts and passing the occasional electric car will be powerful changers of the imagination, I reckon.
“The public spectacle of charging posts and passing the occasional electric car will be powerful changers of the imagination, I reckon.”
Yep, that’s one of the chief effects.
Our garden water tank, and the neighbour’s rooftop solar panels aren’t just a private matter. They’re quiet little advertisements, each in their own way.
Ambigulous: I suppose it’s just that there’s a lot more cheap and easy stuff we can do before we worry about the fancy ones like electric cars.
For instance, if the state and federal governments stopped buying Ford Falcons and started buying Ford Focuses.
Agree about that – but that’s really the low-hanging fruit. I had to giggle when I read my University’s self-congratulations on deciding to drive their academics around in 4-cylinder cars instead of 6-cylinders. Of course, this one actually saves govs, corporations, etc. money so its a bit of a no-brainer.
Do you know of any bigger strategies to change private transport?
robert, problematic to offer your anecdotal example as evidence that electric cars are not suitable. I just searched for some stats on average commute distance, demographic info, etc. to ascertain how relevant or not your complaints are.
I’ll take a punt and suggest that for most people for most travel 160km range would be fine. My twice weekly trip from inner-west out to Penrith is about a 110km roundtrip. Not sure how many people would be going further than that in Sydney for a commute, maybe from the central coast. Regenerative charging braking systems in stop-start sydney traffic would extend charge distance. Eventually, I suggest such initiatives as solar powered charging stations at large institutions (schools, universities, hospitals, big businesses, etc.) should be a building requirement.
I’m with ambigulous re getting ball rolling.
I can’t wait for the low rpm torque, woot!
Firstly the “pluggable hybrids’ have a battery capacity of about 1kWh won’t get you far and a waste of time to use as a “spinning reserve”(this is the ultimate wet green dream)
The point we are all missing is that most car trips are less than 20 km so even a 10 kWh battery will get you to work and back and still leave capacity for a run to the supermarket.
If you want to see infrastructure for EV,s go to Switzerland. The people taking me to lunch there drove the EV to a shopping centre, we all hopped out of the car and there by the parking spot was a plug for the EV. The guy who owned the car said that he subscribed to a service that provided charging facilities all over Switzerland. He plugged us in swiped his card and off we went for lunch.
In Oz we have a low point in the electricity demand at about 4 AM, in fact demand declines rapidly after 11 PM. (That’s what “off peak” hot water systems are all about. So charging vehicles will take advantage of the off peak tariff. Interestingly there is a net carbon benefit- by filling the demand hole the electricity supply system we cause the generator efficiency to improve by a few percent. In any event – and listen up Luddites – the average thermal efficiency of a petrol engine car driven in traffic is less than 8% the thermal efficiency of coal fired power station is 30-40% depending on load. So transferring emissions to the generation system makes sense, using the vehicle battery to load up the system during off peak also makes sense.
Hybrid vehicles will go the way of all hybrids -extinct and soon. If you really want to save on CO2 emissions don’t buy a Prius buy a Citroen Diesel or better still a Citroen for your trips to the Healesville Sanctuary and an electric vehicle to drive to work.
Small electric vehicles should be really cheap to build, it should be possible to put a 50 km range vehicle on the market for < $7000:00. Not at all fancy except that it would out accellerate petrol vehicles.
Finally, the real problem is energy storage. Forget about lithium ion batteries as a long term solution. The only sources of Lithium Carbonate are in Tibet and parts of South America.
However there are some new battery couples coming to commercialisation.
Huggy
I agree with you Robert – those better place dudes are spinning faster than gyroscopes. Did you see the Wired feature on them? Read the comments, interesting stuff.
Hooooowwwwever, I would say that govt intervention in something like is probably better than the billions we’ve spend propping up our crappy domestic car industry, and the recent billions they got to start thinking green.
In regards to practicality, that hasn’t stopped the Prius from selling like hotcakes, despite the fact that the results are marginalish (particuarly in city driving), and the carbon cost of a new car makes a 2nd hand Yaris, as you point out, a far better saver.
So in some ways, I think yes, the idea is more powerful than the reality.
Why not advocate both, Robert @ 10?
Also, I’ve got some problems with your ‘just cost’ justification. Big, lumpy markets like energy distribution need broad normative underpinnings, not least because technologies are a kind of ‘congealed politics’ but because success on economic terms requires practical coordination. (this is where someone like Hayek is worse than useless)
dk.au: because the technology just isn’t quite there yet. You do have a point about “congealed politics”, but all the political will in the world can’t overcome physics and chemistry.
Witness the repeated attempts of the California Air Resources Board to mandate the creation of electric cars, then hydrogen fuel-cell cars.
I suppose my concern about solar cells on roofs, and electric cars, is something I’ve expressed before – the glamorous marginal stuff serves as greenwash for governments to do nothing on less glamorous, but more substantive and immediate things.
Robert @ 10
Good point. So let’s draw up a list, and you can put them in coost-effectiveness order. (Many of us aren’t sure where to find reliable figures.)
I’m confident you want to reduce greenhouse emissions as much as the next person, but some concrete suggestions (such as small, or more efficient cars) wouldn’t go astray. Positive change requires sound advice.
There are a number of such lists: McKinsey and Co. drew up a good one (here’s the US one, but they also did an Australian version), a couple of years ago.
Top of the list are things like house insulation, gas/solar hot water, changes in agricultural practices, high-efficiency concrete. After that it’s replacing coal fired electricity. Electric cars are right at the end of the list.
PV on rooftops is certainly green wash so are fuel cell cars (Fuel cells are an energy source and are power limited thus the fuel cell vehicle will have no acceleration capacity at all) Please, please don’t mention super capacitors or the fucking hydrogen economy.
My reading of the McKinsey report and others is that motor vehicles are right up there in the CO2 emission ranking – about the same as coal fired energy generation in the US for example.
Thing is that it is relatively easy to improve the “carbon efficiency” of power generation and impossible to improve the carbon efficiency of petrol engined motor vehicles in ordinary traffic conditions. The impact of a small electric vehicle would be huge. The CO2 emissions get transferred into the power generation sector where the intrinsic efficiency is about 3 times and the other pollutants disappear entirely (Fine particulate emissions, hydrocarbon fumes etc etc).
Huggy.
The thing people overlook is that the charging posts are linked to the power grid and that is supplied by coal so you are only moving the emissions somewhere else. Disposal of these batteries is also an issue a bit like those low voltage light bulbs. But if economy keeps going the way it is horses will make a comeback. then the big problem is what to do with all the horse poo.
It never ends does it?
The way to start the roll-out is to tie up contracts with large buyers. Think car fleets. Better Place could build their first connection points in depots for Councils, Gov’t depts, couriers, large businesses etc, and then expand into public spaces where they have clusters of clients.
The challenge though is whether the distribution grids can cope with the extra flow of electricity to the recharge points and battery stations. I assume they will hook into the existing grid? This will mean more substations, etc. Because of the way electricity prices are regulated, this would lead to even higher rises in household bills (on top of CPRS, network growth due to air-conditioning in peak times…).
Sorry folks but there is the issue of human irrationality, carelessness, incompetence…let’s just invoke Murphy’s law to juxtapose against all that sensible human endeavour that is represented in the electric vehicle or ‘plug in’.
I’m talking about the miscalculation or the ‘risky ride’ of those who forget or don’t bother to assess journey length and battery charge. Unless it’s a hybrid we’re gonna see a lot of dead cars…a lot of bums up pushing along the highway. The NRMA guys are gonna have to have dodgem bumpers just to push these people to the nearest re-charge point. Traffic reports are going to be 40 minutes long and be sponsored by dozens of Harvey Normans. Tow truckers are gonna make a killing.
Pablo,
Or you could fit the cars with a GPS warning drivers when they are becoming too far away from the next charge point and directing them to the next available.
Alan, I have already explained that Electric Vehicles that are charged from the grid do not increase overall CO2 emissions – in fact they reduce them despite being charged from coal fired power stations, this is because the thermal efficiency of a petrol vehicle being driven in traffic is best case about 8%. Think of idling waiting for the traffic light, think of crawling along in bumper to bumper traffic. Electric vehicle do not use electricity while waiting for the lights and generate it when you slow down for the next set. The efficiency of an electric vehicle will be in the high 90%. also the EV will be charged from off peak electricity at 4 AM.
Pablo.I would not worry about flat batteries. When you actually do some research you will find out why.
Huggy
Another idea that might help with the time needed to charge EV batteries is to try to use ultracapacitors, or @#$%ing supercapacitors, as a temporary storage medium and at least partially charge the batteries from the charged ultracapacitors. You might be able to design the ultracapacitors to be flatter and more compact than the usual design for stand alone capacitor components and you might even be able to fit layers of the stuff within the casing for batteries, if it was all adequately shielded. For short trips in the city you might be able to charge up the capacitors in a few minutes, and it would be possible to quickly charge up a ‘flat’ EV with enough juice to get it to a charging point. On their own ultracapacitors would probably not a be suitable storage medium but they might improve things as part of the battery system. It all helps. I think they are also used as temporary storage in regenerative braking systems.
Early battery systems for EVs will be expensive. Early computers were expensive too when they first came out, and compared to today’s computers they weren’t that flash for the money. If there is a competitive market for energy storage systems and lots of money being spent paying for them, then over time research into cheaper and higher performance energy storage systems will bring prices down. It might take some time though.
Thankyou RobV for your assessment of ultracapacitors. It is reassuring but it would be interesting to have an assessment of Australia’s (urban) vehicle age, degree of regular servicing and driver responsiveness to new technology. The roll out of new vehicles with radically new propulsion and servicing needs is a huge undertaking. Those who think it is just a matter of battery technology and recharge points have got to be kidding.
Huggy
The Better Place promo doesn’t seem to say anything about charging at 4am, and I can’t imagine I (or any other interested user) would drive to a charging station at 4am to get a charge. In fact, Better Place seems to avoid the issue of peak time charging except for the possibility of recharging back from the batteries (although generation shortage is not usually the problem, it’s usually the capacity of the distribution network to cope (recent drought related events excepted)).
Of course the battery exchanges are a different matter, they hold a possibility for avoiding network difficulty if they are a/the major recharging method.
Huggy, I think you’re being a bit harsh on Pablo though. Except maybe he hasn’t considered that petrol cars also have a limited range and empty tanks don’t seem to be banking up traffic too often.
Thanks Robert,
cheers
Huggybunny @ 13 wrote:
Ahhh, but diesels are evil according to Robert. Its the particulates you see. Its an intractable problem that will never be solved. We’ll be zooming around in hydrogen-powered flying cars before we figure out how to scrub the particulates from diesel exhaust
Seriously, Robert makes some good points. V2G clearly isn’t going to happen next week, but I don’t think we should be giving up on EVs just yet. Its a technology that doesn’t appear have any fatal flaws (so far), unlike hydogren, biofuels etc.
The simple answer to all this is just tax the carbon. Tax it at the pump, and tax the gas-guzzlers in the showroom to pay for rebates on the fuel-sippers to reduce the sticker-shock of new technology. No need to pick winners like the Israelis, just set the right price signal and let the market do its work … the market is still good for some things y’know!
Problem is, we don’t have the politicians with the courage to implement any of the this, and punters would swiftly kick out any pollie who tried it.
Pablo @ 27,
Yeah, attitudes change slowly. What would make a big difference, I think anyway, would be if there were a zippy low weight sporty kind of EV, even if it had a low to medium range even for an EV. Family cars would be heavier and would need more batteries and would have less of a range compared with current hydrocarbon cars so it might take some time for EVs to break into that market, if they will at all. Get people on board while they’re young and by the time they’ll need a family car the technology will probably be up to the job. It might sound weak but you wouldn’t be able to design EVs for every market segment for vehicles at the moment. Perhaps planning for generational change would work better.
Carbonsink: yep, still peeved at particulates
Seriously, I don’t think we should give up on EVs either. I reckon they’re our current best shot for carbon-free private ground transport.
I just reckon that throwing large amounts of government money at massive recharging networks is premature, and that’s the only way they’ll get built any time soon.
But we’ll continue to throw massive amounts of money at the petrol car manufacturing industry in a not hugely successful attempt to encourage them to make the carbon-fuel hungry beasts here.
Hrgh,
You plug your car into its charger and the utility turns the charger on at about 2AM-4AM just as it does for your hot water service. Been doing it for 40 years.
Carbonsink, fine particulates are a problem for diesel engines with high sulphur content fuel. Yes not good; but fuel efficient the small engines are.
Capacitors super or not have a serious problem – physics – the energy in a capacitor is given as half the voltage squared times the capacitance in Farads. This relationship makes them basically useless for long term energy storage for power electronic systems. They do not match the energy voltage curves of either batteries or fuel cells. You can only skim a small amount of energy off the top before the voltage collapses.
In Switzerland the recharging systems are self supporting, you subscribe and the system owner sends you a bill at the end of the year which is just your share of the total energy use divided by the number of subscribers (true).
The guaranteed absolute best way to sink the electric vehicle is to subsidize the product. By all means put our money into research etc. The solar rooftop subsidy has simply resulted in the solar companies pocketing the subsidy (thanks suckers).
I have serious reservations about the battery exchange concept. I can confidently predict that the electric vehicle of the near future will be a simple series hybrid with a largish battery and a small generator either a fuel cell or an engine that runs on ammonia – yes ammonia – this generator will cur in as required; on jolly jaunts to the wild life sanctuary no doubt. If you just drive the car to work you wont need the generator bit. In either case the main energy source will be the grid.
Huggy
I’m hoping Citroen or one of the European carmakers will bring out a hybrid diesel.
What about owning a basic low emissions car and renting for special trips?
Huggybunny,
Great posts – thanks.
Despite having done some reading on the subject, they were a crash course in themselves!
Huggy @ 34
That works when the charger is in your garage. What about when the charger is shared with the rest of the street and not always available on the evening you need it? And you need a charge now?
Or is the plan to put the rechagre poles on private houses? If this is the case then problem solved.
My thinking comes from my experience with car share, which is available 90% of the time but not always when I try and book late.
Sure, but we already have a slow recharging network in the form of your nearest power-point, and I can’t believe that a battery swapping network would be that technically cahllenging, or expensive, to build. Certainly cheaper than building a hydrogen distribution network.
Like I said, we should just tax the carbon, which would fund generous rebates on low-emission vehicles like hybrids and PHEVs. Once the price signal is in place (and there’s a critical mass of PHEVs on the road) there should be plenty of incentive for the private sector to start investing in recharging networks.
Of course, no-one can raise capital for anything at the moment, and the last thing any politician wants to do is raise the price of energy.
Brian @ 35. Looks as though Peugeot/Citroen (PSA) is doing just that, but who knows how long it will take to reach the market, given the cost differential: LINK
“Of course, no-one can raise capital for anything at the moment, and the last thing any politician wants to do is raise the price of energy.”
Actually they’ve all been very willing to raise the price of energy in recent years, with more to come.
Hrgh,
No the charger is actually in the car itself – in all the EV’s that I have inspected – you plug it into any ordinary power point it recharges the battery at 2.35 kWh/h if you plug into a standard 10A point or twice this if you install a 20A socket (it knows which one you use). Thus a 10A socket will completely recharge a 10 kWh battery in about 4 and a bit hours. At a cost of about 50 cents for the whole 4 hours (based on an off peak rate of $0.10/kWh).
If you then drive a round trip of say 25 km you get a “fuel” cost of 2 cents/km.
That seems to me to be a big incentive to actually stagger over to the power point and plug the thing in every night – you can get the power point put onto a night tariff . The 10 A power point is actually about right for most batteries.
Huggy
Tediously, as a practical point, I live in a suburb with little off-street parking. I don’t have a reserved spot in front of my house and I have no property right to such a spot. Rechargeable cars would require me (and nearly everyone in my street) to garage my car off-site, at a new facility built for that purpose (and there’s soo much spare land for new effing car parks in the inner suburbs). So what’s the practical solution there?
Also, I know arguing by anecdote is tedious, but most of the kilometres my car does (>10 000 per annum) is 230 km to near Benalla. Do I really have to stop at Avenel for a while to get a recharge? Will hotswappable batteries ever exist for a wide variety of vehicles by different manufacturers? Do I have to pay my mum for the electricity?
Hmmm, colour me sceptical.
wilful @ 42 – its not about getting a solution for everyone, just for a large proportion of people. As a second car it would suit very many people, and personally, with only one car, I’d be happy with a range of only 100km and just hire a car in the fairly rare occasions when we need more. Wouldn’t buy one at twice the cost of an ordinary car though!
different Chris, I understand that arguing by anecdote can be a distraction, but I’m not on my pat malone here – very few people in my suburb have off street parking. This is a major issue with car recharging.
wilful @ 44 – yes, though would the areas with little off street parking generally be those in higher density inner city areas where public transport services are generally better? Car recharging would also be an issue for many appartments as well where there simply isn’t the infrastructure yet.
Anyway I think until they can get the capital costs down to more reasonable levels (or fuel costs rise enough) its not going to get widespread adoption.
JoelP @ 40 wrote:
Perhaps you could enlighten me. Please do tell me the name of a politician who has put his or her name to a bill that has raised energy prices through taxation, ETS or otherwise.
Wilful, there is absolutely no reason why you and the other denizens of your street should not club together and organise a row of unobtrusive power points (with RCD’s) down your street. You can each have a RFID thingy to activate the point and direct the cost to you. (The RFID gadget makes them intrinsically safe BTW as there will be no power until the RFID reader is swiped after the plug is inserted)
I grow tired of this standard Thatcherite response to any-thing new.
Huggy
I don’t know if it’s ‘Thatcherite’, but it’s certainly tedious. I thought that the ability to ‘think outside the square’ to use the common jargon, is highly prized these days. I think in reality we are less imaginative than we used to be, and less open to new ideas.