Making decisions as a group means unchallenged conclusions. Yale psychologist Irving Janis coined Groupthink to explain what happens when leaders agree. Not necessarily all leaders, just enough. But with Focus Group-guided government and mainstream media subscribing to it, Groupthink flourishes, matters of opinion become unimpeachable Truth. As a result, while seven in ten claim they want to buy electric cars, hardly anybody actually does. It is a yawning gap suggesting people are not being truthful or surveyors are asking the wrong questions. It may not be a formal conspiracy, but there is such a body of opinion seemingly backing electric cars that subjective judgement has been abandoned.

Electric cars may well make a contribution to saving the planet, but in a forensic examination of their real costs by Andrew English in last month’s Intercooler: “Battery cars are a shouty business: the public with understandable concerns about high prices, limited range, restricted battery life and patchy recharging coverage; the motor industry squawking about profitability, cost per kilowatt hour and energy density; the get-rich-quick recharging companies jostling to sell the public branded recharging volts; and the Government trilling its messianic ‘battery-car’ message without considering some no less ecological alternatives.”

I could not have put it better.

English’s key comment was: “Those with a horse in the race want us to change to battery electric motoring right now.” I can scarcely think of a better example of Groupthink, which consigns alternatives to oblivion. Hydrogen fuel cells, ultra-capacitors, alternative battery chemistries, clean fuels maybe even, as English suggests, just driving a bit less. “Battery cars are going to be an important part of our future transport,” he writes, “But if we’re ever going to get to net zero carbon emissions, we’re going to have to do a bit less shouting and a bit more thinking.”

I have been thinking in this blog since 2009 when we had a Fleet Street Group of motoring correspondents. Andrew English was a prominent member as we were briefed by Dr Thomas Weber from the Daimler AG board of management, responsible for research and development. He assured us that whatever wheeze politicians had for dealing with climate change, he had a €4.4 billion annual budget to come up with answers. A pattern was emerging. Industry would find ways. If electric cars looked winsome it would make them, promote them and profit. If rules on diesel emissions were too strict, it would outflank them.

In 2011 I was recalling that back in November 1991, California demanded that, “by 2010 seven cars out of ten will be electric.,” How that failed. The industry was over-excited about EVs. It had convinced itself that, somehow, it would have batteries that could cope, and when politicians anxious for Green votes promised to outlaw petrol and diesel it could rewrite the laws of physics and chemistry. There has been progress but electricity is, ineluctably, still no more than a means of transmitting power. It is not power.

Wholesale enthusiasm for electric cars continued to puzzle me in 2012 when it even extended to racing them. The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) agreed to licence commercial rights of a Formula E Championship to, “a consortium of international investors, Formula E Holdings Ltd (FEH).” The FIA claimed, “It represents a vision for the future of the motor industry over the coming decades,” and sure enough sponsors, desperate to seem Green, piled in. Except for those enriching themselves, English’s “those with a horse in the race” electric car sport remains a dead duck, unexciting, lacklustre, slow processions of dreary whining running-down toy cars. Yet the money in it remains. Formula E is still going. Slowly.

Spin doctors and politicians became interchangeable. Media hype cast truth aside in 2013 when transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin told Sky News that electric cars were not just town cars. They are fantastic, they’re built to a very high specification. Yes Minister was no comedy. I saw McLoughlin at his Jim Hacker ministry next morning making sure Sir Humphrey followed him on television announcing a £37 million giveaway for plug-in chargers in homes, streets and railway stations. Two years later the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) was cheerfully reporting electric car sales doubling, from 2 per cent to 4 per cent. Yet it had to include, “The growing range of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electric cars continued to attract buyers, with a record one in 12 people choosing one. Demand surged by a substantial 88.7%, with the sector accounting for 8.0% of the market – its highest ever level – as billions of pounds of manufacturer investment help deliver more ultra-low and zero emission models to the market.”

In 2017 Stanford University predicted petrol and diesel cars would be gone in eight years. That’s now only 4 years away. Recently Andrew English alerted me again to Sir William Grove’s 1839 discovery of his “gas battery”, the fuel cell, making electricity from hydrogen and surely a better long-term prospect than batteries made from unobtanium and undisposable minerals. I have long advocated hydrogen or hybrids as the best ways forwards even though critics complain that he problem with rechargeable hybrids is that people do not plug them in to the mains.