Has London Cracked the Code on Electric Vehicles?! |Everything Electric Podcast with Michael Hurwitz

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1:04hello and welcome to the everything electric podcast uh this week's guest really interesting man uh i've known him for quite a few years he used to work for ozev that's when i think i first met him the office of zero emission vehicles which was a british government um run uh arm of government to encourage and develop the uptake of electric vehicles of all sight of all types um uh that was a many years ago that was not recently he's since worked for tfl transport for london uh where he introduced now over 2 000 electric buses the introduction of electric taxi cabs of which there are now i don't even know probably tens of thousands in london uh the you know the encouragement of fleets to use electric delivery vans and trucks in central london what's happened in central london is this remarkable turnaround in air quality really is noticeable london used to be you know one of the dirtiest cities in europe it's a big city millions of people live in london and hundreds of thousands of diesel trucks vans buses were on the roads every day in london and it could really stink it was really bad that has just been transformative how how much that's changed and this guest was very much at the very epicenter of all those decisions um he's also he's just an extraordinary man and his knowledge of how you can facilitate charging in cities how people who don't have anywhere to charge out you know they can't park a car off their off the off the street at their homes all those things are very much at the forefront of our discussion so i think it's a really fascinating topic um before we dive into that can i just say that uh we've been now going over 15 years we're hugely grateful to the response that we've had for this show over the years anyway that's enough please welcome to the everything electric podcast michael hervitz our three free youtube channels on evs and clean tech are funded by our fun-packed test-drive-tastic events in Farnborough, London, the South West, the North, Melbourne and Sydney and next up we're in Canada for Everything Electric Vancouver and new for UK viewers.

3:26You can now buy a battery EV and much more at everythingelectric.store. So Michael thank you so much for finding time to do this again. I'm going to be I think we should be honest about it we've recorded this podcast once before with the aid of I'm not going to mention their name a world leading audio visual electronics brand and we recorded something in their wonderful studios and it was all marvellous and none of it worked they had one job and they let us down and so we got it's now that was a few weeks ago um it's a pleasure to talk to you again though well that's very kind of you and vice versa so i really do appreciate it though because it is that was an extra frustration.

4:09But can you kick us off then with a quick resume of what you've done and how you've, well, yes, your career. I just don't like using the word career because I've never had one. I don't know what they are, but you have. So can you tell us about your career? Yeah, sure. Well, thank you for having me. So look, I guess the headline is that for nearly 20 years now, I've been lucky enough to have led some of the UK's biggest shifts to green and smart transport. And that's either through high impact programs in government, so nationally, or here in London, but also in the private sector, so as startups and bigger commercial organizations.

4:50So the steps on the journey, I'd started in the private sector, but then I moved international government. And I guess it was like, it was the ex-private sector guy. And I became the most senior government official on clean energy and future tech in transport. So I wrote the UK's first low carbon transport strategy. I set up and led the UK's program on electric vehicles. I did the same on driverless cars. My remit was also biofuels, giving out R &D funding, and then regulating the automotive industry, including at some interesting times like Dieselgate. Yes. Then I went to Transport for London, so Innovation Director there.

5:29So I led on... Can I just explain? So previously you were working in the national government as a civil servant. That was your role. I mean, just for people overseas might wonder if you were an elected representative, but you worked for the government. And then TFL is Transport for London, which is the local London Transport Authority. Exactly right. Integrated transport. I've got that right. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. And so, yeah, I mean, in a way, same kind of stuff, but a sort of megacity rather than national level. So micromobility, so e-bikes and e-scooters, planning the capital's EV infrastructure rollout, electrifying the buses.

6:09We ran a bunch of really cool innovation projects. um but i was also involved in the crisis management mechanisms at transport for london so i was something called a gold commander for major incidents and that particularly during covid that kept me really busy yeah um you know we sat in this big temporary field hospital in the excel exhibition center called the nightingale hospital which was an interesting time um so yeah so at this point though at the end of my time at tfl i was itching to get back in the private sector because I've done this sort of market creation side of it. I'm quite mission-driven about this agenda, and I genuinely believe to shift the dial, you do need creative businesses to make things happen on the ground.

6:50So I rolled the dice. I had my startup adventure with the EV Challenger Arrival, which is quite a wild ride. Maybe we can talk about it. But since 2022, I've been a partner at PA Consulting, and I lead part of their business called Clean and Smart Mobility. So that is advising global investors, ambitious fleets, some of the biggest government programs, charge point operators, technology, energy and startups on how do you make this shift to clean and smart mobility actually happen? So it sort of moved from vision into, okay, how can we get this operationally, commercially working? So that's me so far.

7:32But I mean, what is fascinating about that is in that period, so for people who don't live in the UK or haven't been to London, I think it would be fair to say that 20 years ago, London wasn't like super toxic city. It wasn't like horrendous because we'd stopped burning coal in the city many years before that. But, you know, it was certainly, it was very noticeable air pollution from road transport. You know, you could smell it. And if you didn't live in London and you arrived at like Euston Station, Paddington station you go bloody hell yeah it was noticeable you know and it was it was pretty toxic and I must I've got to say now and I've just been in London over the last weekend it's it's really transformational I mean it really is a noticeable difference so you've had a real I mean I know it's not just you but there's a definite impact it's had it the air well I think it's measurable isn't it the air is definitely cleaner in London no I mean it is and by the way I've heard other people say that as well.

8:30A friend of my brother-in-law, he's living in South America, and he came back after like 18 years. And I said, what's changed? You know, because there's so many new developments. Yeah. And it was like, it's quiet. Yeah. And it's clean, you know, and like everything, and he felt like everything's gone electric. I mean, I guess we'll come on to talk about the ultra low emission zone, right? Maybe that's a good thing to start with. But it's quite a controversial policy. and it started in 2019 i didn't lead it there were some great colleagues at tfl that did that but it happened when i was there um and um headline is that uh you need a car if it's a petrol gasoline car has to be from 2006 onwards uh and if it's a diesel it needs to be from 2015 onwards so it gets you know reasonably high level of um emission standards um and last year they did the monitoring report on it and it's really made a difference so right cumulatively over that five-year period NOx oxides of nitrogen were 24 % lower particulates I think 29 % lower and in year depending on where you were in in London um it was I think 33 to 39 % lower NOx than it was so so yeah you know you you probably can smell the particulates going down um yes but but overall um it's better and And there's a good equity angle on that, actually, as well, because often it's the most deprived areas that have the worst impacts.

9:57So, you know, that's part of the argument. But it is controversial. And, you know, I've been out of TFL for a while now and you sort of see the amazing thing about TFL and the mayor and the mayors is that they're happy to be brave and they're happy to be strong. You know, like these are quite, they can be quite polarizing these policies, but they've stuck with them and they've done it. and it's not just on emissions right you know talking about transport they've reallocated a lot of road space to cycling cycling and walking and here's a fact for you um the tube underground london underground network is 402 kilometers long right that's all the different lines yeah all different lines um last year end of last year 2024 um the length of cycle lanes overtook that wow amazing as you know which is amazing and there's half a billion cycling trips now a year in london which is you know it's not it's not like northern europe certain cities there but it's growing it's transformed though from when i used to live in london and cycled everywhere there Yeah, totally.

11:07But, you know, it is, I would say that it's very, very human centered the way TFL does its strategies. But if I was to offer one thing, there's two things. It's very good at talking about strategies for people. But in a city, you have to move a lot of stuff, you know, so it's freight servicing, which I don't think always gets the priority. and it's really good at the sticks side of it. You need to be brave. You need to do the sticks. Sometimes I kind of wish there might be a little bit better than a carrot. Yeah. I do a lot of work now with fleets. And if you look at last mile deliveries in London, huge growth in that.

11:53It's not just deliveries responsible for the vans. There's like servicing. you know you're like plumbers and you know electricians and stuff um but you you if you help these companies work out their like their asset strategy when are they going to shift from diesel to electric yeah um one of the the key drivers that's it's a completely unemotional decision it's commercial and finance and operation yeah that's it and and they look at the total cost of ownership of moving from one type to another. And normally, because electricity is cheaper, if you do more miles, you're spending less money on diesel.

12:34It's a great idea. But in a place like London, it presents a really interesting challenge because it's so dense. The delivery van will come out of the depot and it'll drive around and do its 130 drops in a day or whatever it is. You only do like 20 miles because it's so dense and you're actually not doing enough mileage to get necessarily all the benefit that you could right in other places um and and the congestion charge for you those you do get that there's a discount for electric there was actually an exemption for electric and uh tfl was meant to end that this year right yeah this is for electric delivery vans not not private cars yeah yeah well also for cars as you know it was meant to end it this year and i mean i'm really pleased they are now consulting that maybe we don't turn it off altogether.

13:21But they're saying, well, maybe we keep the van discount to 50%. I'm a bit worried it's not enough because the market hasn't produced enough fans and very low margin businesses, highly optimized. And I think they might need a little bit more chucked at it to make decisions. But look, yeah, TFL is great and it is brave and it does things that are often the envy of the world um uh but yeah it's uh i would say a few more carrots i think would be yes would be would be handy but i mean it is it is that um you know the the change is very noticeable and i mean i've i'm not sure of it but it's certainly a something that's happening in many european cities you know the same uh kind of basic trajectory paris being obvious amsterdam is very good i think berlin has done a lot of that but more recently New York which I'm really interested because you'd think that would be the hardest place to instigate anything but they've instigated quite a lot of of legislation recently that has become very very popular with the people who live there and very unpopular with people who drive into Manhattan so I think they have put some restrictions on driving in Manhattan but I don't know enough about it to comment yeah well I mean there tends to be a thing where any major intervention that jolts people out of what they used to do is resisted.

14:54But in the end, there will be government analysis, they'll talk about benefits and dis-benefits. Oh, right. Dis-benefits is like things that don't go well. Um, but you know, you do often find like one of, one of the key things is in most places where it's happened, where, where you pedestrianize areas, there's a real sense of fear before it happens for local businesses. Right. And more often than not, not exclusively, but more often than not, um, it's just reshaped in a different way and you have higher footfall, but less vehicular traffic. And, um, you know, in, I doing Times Square in New York, that was pretty brave.

15:37that's right close the whole thing but the place feels so different now yeah um and has a different quality so yeah yeah because actually on um when it was that saturday afternoon uh my wife and i were in london and we went to an art exhibition like a like proper boomers should do and then we walked it we just were going to going to see a friend and we walked across regent street which had been closed because of pride and it was so lovely it was so amazing and it's sort of painfully obvious but if you have a big wide street like that in the center of a city there's there were thousands of people walking up down there was no traffic at all there were no buses even they must have rerouted the buses because i know that's a popular bus route and it just was transformative and you can't help it as a pedestrian you go i don't care about the complexities right now and how difficult this is and how much it's making lives awkward for other people i.e taxi drivers bus drivers etc this is really nice yeah no it's but again it's that equity point equity is not just about people i mean it's obviously about people not everyone can walk right and yes people need the vehicles but actually part of that wider equity is the emergency services and the uh and the servicing and the supply to those shops and cafes and restaurants and um yeah and the waste uh and moving aggregates in and out for building and you know so it's um yeah it's a tough balance uh and i think yeah you if you want to have a people-centered city that people want to come and live at and live in um you want to make it human-centered but you've also got to find a way of of dealing with all the other stuff in in there as well yeah so yeah it's a tough gig being an urban planner yeah oh it's got to be it's got to be horrendous i mean what were the sort of major resistances when you les the oh you les stands for ultra low emission zone just remembering to explain what those mean which uh but what were the main pushbacks when that was first introduced was it i mean was there any kind of trade group was it taxi drivers was it the delivery people was it angry bankers who wanted to drive their range rovers um well do you know something everyone has an opinion and everyone has a view of how it could be done um i think some of the hardest bits were it was the it was the equity side of it you know so if if you have a geographical based system you have to draw a boundary somewhere yeah and it's the people who are just on one side just in or just out you know that hold on a minute i can't do what i used to do now without paying um but in a bit for example in through that consultation um uh you know there's uh for the congestion charge for example you know resident discount is one of the things you're gonna get a big discount if you're in the area um but uh yeah i would say that's probably the biggest thing is that the people that just fall the wrong side of the line right on the edge of it yeah yeah exactly and particularly if you're in a you know if you've got less money to play with yeah forcing you to change a car is is a big expense you know even even if the majority of cars are secondhand is still yeah it's still hard to do so yeah i would say that's probably the big one so i mean is there are there plans to extend it though so at the moment so at the moment it would be what i would describe as the center the central part of london is the eulet zone and then is the congestion zone bigger than that i'm not i'm absolutely no so the the congestion charge is the central right right that's very simple yeah so that's that's an extra 15 pounds they're talking about increasing the the amount per day um so that's that's really central london and then the wider one is the um the ultra low emission zone right it's not quite but it's quite close to the the m25 is a highway motorway that goes right in london it doesn't go all the way out to it but it's most of that area of greater london right so that's the bigger area yes that's the area um look um as far as i'm aware not at the moment i'm not i'm not in i'm not in the gang anymore yes you're not in the room whether yeah exactly but um but all i do know is that it is you know it is it's a big decision and a brave decision to to expand it and um yeah there will be a very careful political judgment about when the the conditions are right to do anything more ambitious um at the moment they're consulting on what happens to the exemptions and the future charges so that's that's probably enough political uh debate that they're uh for the next few months but i mean in some ways i suppose it could also be you know this is over the next 10 years the the improvements that i certainly witnessed uh in terms of battery technology in particular when i was in china the cost and the you know the energy density of the next generation of batteries could mean that a delivery van that could replace a diesel is actually cheaper to buy anyway, and it's much cheaper to run, and it will last longer.

20:54You know, those economic imperatives might start to make people go, we'll have electric anyway because it's better rather than we've been forced to. Oh, I mean, I think, yeah, it's going to get there. I mean, we've spoken about this kind of stuff before, you know, But like, you know, the battery, it's already sort of tracking 90 % lower battery cost than it was. I mean, like we've been speaking about London, but like when I was in national government, I remember in the early days, you know, this is the beginning of the low carbon transport program. I remember having a study done about, okay, where could batteries be applied?

21:34Because it looked that, you know, if you're looking at a curve that somebody says is going to go down and down and down, you're not quite sure. No, absolutely not. But we did this study, and it must have been published, would have been published, by Ricardo, the engineering consultants. And broadly speaking, the exam question was, okay, cars, yeah, I can see, vans, I can see. for a heavy goods vehicle, how heavy would the battery need to be and how much would it cost to have a truck, a long-distance truck, have the same range? In Europe, it's about 40 tonnes, these vehicles. The answer was 40 tonnes of battery.

22:11So you have to double the weight of the truck. Clearly ridiculous. But since then, energy density almost doubled. Battery costs down more than 90%. Yeah, because that's the other thing back then. The cost of that battery, if you did buy a 40-ton battery, would be mind-boggling. It would be in the millions. Yeah, absolutely. But also the reliability. There's been this kind of tradition, like this growth curve. Every year it's got better and better and better. The amount of degradation reduces. But in the last couple of years, you know, there's CATL have been talking about this sort of no-degradation battery on LFP, those batteries.

22:51least there's various techniques now they're starting to apply to if not completely remove but hugely mitigate battery degradation so these things are going to last a lot longer than anyone ever thought 90 years that's what they're talking about a useful life of 90 years which is yeah so yeah so look if it all things remain equal who knows what's going to happen globally with tariffs and stuff if the flow of if the flow of batteries can uh um can can be maintained and could be produce maybe more locally at good prices then yeah for sure i think the point that you were talking about it will just become better for a lot of people it's yes yeah i mean it's not it's not better for everyone yet it really isn't you know and um uh but it's about the way you yeah the way you explained that you know because if you don't work in that industry you don't know about how deliveries work you know you're just in your house and a van pulls up and they give you a parcel you know but the actual logistics involved in that and how how the the short distances they travel you know initially you might think well that's fine because electric vehicles can all do that but that isn't the point because you're you know you're not you're not taking you're not getting the advantages of an electric vehicle when you're driving 15 20 miles stop start i mean there are a lot of advantages i think but is it that the actual fuel use of a diesel is much lower when you're doing that and you're not thrashing up and down a motorway i i mean i'm guessing that might yeah that yeah that's that's one of the key things that's one of the key things i mean look there's you know there's various things how much does servicing maintenance and repair you know smr how much does that cost um you know um there's there's a lot less to go wrong on uh on an electric van which is a potential benefit at the moment maybe because of the maturity of the insurance industry or the progress of the maintenance industry is not necessarily used to this technology.

24:49So when things do go wrong big, when they do go wrong with electric, they think it's big. And I think, oh gosh, I don't know what to do with that battery. Let's write the whole vehicle off. So there's actually a higher percentage of EVs currently being written off after an incident than ICE. Whether or not that's necessary may or may not always be the case. So you're finding that there's a whole series of parameters to it. But the big thing, the big thing is, you know, fuel costs is a massive saving. Although, again, in the UK, electricity is higher than some of the markets. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

25:27But then, so now you're working in a consulting role, and that is, so are you presumably then talking to different companies about, and we're talking you know the fleets that you're talking about this is mainly this is mainly like delivery fleet is that is that the area that you're dealing with uh that that is some of it so that's some of it um you know it's uh all sizes and then it's all along the value chain so it's um you know some of the big um like leasing entities you know like who who finance all the vehicles on the road like really big deal for them about how um yeah it's a really big deal for them about how you change your whole ecosystem if everything's powered differently you know do they engage in the right way um so yeah so then the charge point operators a lot of investors you know who do you pick who's going to win yeah um you know and and this is a an emerging market right So a lot of bets were made a few years ago.

26:28So there's the work with, unfortunately, some of the companies are going to win. Some of them are not going to win. And so it's a question of like, you know, for the companies themselves, how do you get them fit enough to be the ones to survive? For the investors, how do you pick the winners? How do you tweak the strategy so it's more resilient? But, yeah, so it's all along the value chain from financing the vehicles to running the vehicles, to dealing with the customer relationships, to managing the energy for them, for the future tech that enables the whole system. And then, yeah, and then other stuff like driverless as well.

27:04But so, yeah, so it's all along the future mobility value chain at the moment. But it's very different. Yeah, go on. Yeah, well, I was only going to say that London is a good example of, I don't know what the percentages are. I know the national percentage is it's about 60-40. So 60 % of UK households, you can park a vehicle off the street and 40 % you can't. That's a government figure I remember from a while ago. So that may have changed, I don't know. But in London, it's got to be 85 % you park your vehicle on the street. I mean, it's very few people can park their vehicle off the street. Yeah, it more or less flips.

27:40So, gosh, it was the RAC Foundation did a study. I think they said something like 30 % have access to off-street in London. but 70 % don't and it's um and that's a real issue um yeah you know the the key one of the key squeeze squeezing points in London is land accessibility to land yeah and um yeah interestingly you know these things take time gosh credit to the team that ran it now you know Alex and the team there um but I um we did some analysis a while ago to say like what what's needed on the EV infrastructure and if you look at well where is available land like where is greater london authority in tfl where they own land um where is it in a good place that might be attractive for charging where does the grid have power and if you layer up these things um and and transport for london is actually a really big landlord and they've done a deal with fast ned right uh to to build well it's up to 25 uh rapid charging hubs places on the network because exactly the reason you're saying is that for a lot of people, if you're living in a flat, if you're living in like London Terrace housing, you're not going to have your driveway.

28:55And so there needs to be another solution. So, yeah, so the real premium in London is land. But there's a whole range of things. And we're into governments, like national government stuff now. There's a real issue about how electricity costs could be brought down for public infrastructure. Yeah. I mean, it is something I spoke to someone over the weekend that they'd paid an absurd amount at a rapid charger. And in this particular instance, I'm not going to mention any names of any companies, but in this particular instance... They're very polite. So I've got in a lot of trouble saying the wrong thing about charging companies.

29:36But on one side of this particular motorway services, is there's a row of chargers that are about 78 pence a kilowatt hour. And on the other side, they're 39. And people don't know that. So you go to the one that you've used before, which is more expensive, and then you wind up, you could have just moved the car over the road and paid half, you know, getting on for half of what you paid. And that, I think, there was one charge. This is, I'm thinking, with Fastnet in London. I don't know if they'll do it. but we went to a supermarket in France recently where they had a sign up like just like at a petrol station and it and it said I think it was 48 cents per kilowatt hour like in a big lit up sign with and there was hundreds of charges there and I thought well that's we can't that's quite useful because then you can see another one down there at 36 you go there I mean like you do with that industry that they talk about planning to deploy like six billion uh investment in the huge investment yeah but but there are sort of three well there's there's two structural things and maybe another thing that there's an issue so one of them is that in the uk um domestic electricity is charged at five percent vat yeah but commercial is 20 right yeah and you know interesting question shouldn't you know if if i don't if i don't have access to that because i live in a block of flats because i can't afford a house i choose not to have a house is that fair right so that's number one there's another thing about the electricity um market standing charges and so the way it works in the uk is that um you get uh billed for the standing charge which is like your connection fee to the grid according to what you will eventually use right so if you if you're building a like a rapid charging hub and you're building a head of demand and your demand is going to build up over the next five years.

31:33The way it works at the moment is you're charged for what it's going to be straight away. So it would, and that's pretty tough if these companies are trying to grow businesses. And the final thing is I've always wondered, there is this thing in the UK called the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, or the RTFO, which is, so for liquid fuels, a percentage of that every year has to be from renewable sources, let's say biodiesel, from waste and it's actually this year the target is about I think it's 14 % of what you get on a forecourt is actually biodiesel and there's another target for fuels from waste, another 1 % or 1.5 % and in Germany e-fuels count so essentially if i'm an oil producer um you trade in these credits so they have a value so if i can't produce enough sustainable fuel i can go and buy credits from uh someone who takes like they use vegetable or use cooking oil and turns it into diesel um and and in germany they've included ev charging as a sustainable fuel which to me kind of makes sense so so i think there are things that there's costs in the uk i think need being reviewed but there's also things you could do yeah to give ev charging a bigger value in the uk if you compare to what's going on elsewhere in the world yeah and i mean also though i mean i it's it's not off topic because it does directly affect it but the the discussion that's going on at the moment about the wholesale price of electricity being defined by the cost of gas i mean particularly recently we did a 69 percent uh we had a day where 69 % of all our electricity was from renewables.

33:27But the cost didn't go down to what it should do. It's still because there was a tiny bit that was being produced by gas and that's what defined the cost. And then you go, how did that happen? What incredibly successful lobbying was done to create that ruling or how did that come about? I mean, I'm not necessarily asking you to explain because I certainly don't know, but it does seem weird now. Well, it's changing. I think the system was designed when it really was gas to kept everything going. And if you needed to turn something up and down, it was going to be gas. But, yeah, you're right. I mean, I think, like, watch this space.

34:03I don't know what's happening. I mean, the UK government announced a couple of weeks ago support for some energy intensive industries. The big thing is, though, is exactly what you say. Can you decouple the gas price from the renewables price and how's that set? I think the Secretary of State was on the podcast with Imogen, right? Yes. He was saying they wanted to flip it by 2030, so it's far less reliant on gas. But they're going to have to change something, whether it's regional pricing, whether they completely decouple renewable prices from gas. I don't know, but I think we're all waiting to see.

34:41Yes. I agree with you. But that's the biggest thing. To be honest, up at national policy level, I think that is the most important thing because it has a real commercial impact. Yeah. A real commercial impact. But then the other big thing I think it's worth mentioning about London, the transport for London. Well, a couple of things I want to cover. The buses being electric. I know they're not all electric, but there's a lot of them that are now. I went on one the other day, 27. It was electric. I was very pleased. But I just think the public transport infrastructure, you sort of realise, especially if you spend a bit of time in other cities, it's actually not, I mean, everyone moans about it, but it's actually amazing the public transport infrastructure which predates all of us i mean it's old the underground system is extraordinary the the new elizabeth line you know i've almost become i start praying and worshiping it when i go there because it's so good and uh you know those things really do make a difference but but i mean can we just quickly do the buses because i think that's fascinating yeah yeah well buses so there's like there's 8 1 ,700 London buses.

35:492 ,000 are fully electric. Wow. And that's pretty big. I think when I joined TFL, there were 30 fully electric in 2016. And now there's 2 ,000, which is quite cool. And 3 ,800 hybrids. Right. When it's a bus, are they a plug-in hybrid? Do they still get plugged in at the depot? Or are they just mild hybrid? No, no, hybrid buses, that's just, yeah, I guess more mild hybrid. And, yeah, there are 20 hydrogen as well. Yeah, and they're still running, are they still operating? I believe so. But, yeah, I mean, that's quite a remarkable transformation. I think one of the key things, again, is how do you move it all?

36:34How do you move it all? And one of the systems there is that there's this – it is London transport for London sets the routes and then private operators bid to use it's this like giant sort of rolling procurement where they're kind of relet in time um I've always thought that um changing the whole lot is quite is quite difficult yeah because you've got to maintain this operation going yes um and uh and it's and actually you know shout out for all all the bus depots and the bus operations companies like these you know they are properly the workhorse in london and and they are you you know they are used by a lot of people like compare and contrast um the tube carries i think last year's report 949 million trips a year right bus is more bus is 1.2 billion kidding wow yeah um yeah cycling half a billion um but but interesting thing um i let me finish the the public transport i think national rail and like overground is again it's about similar to the tube you know just just under a billion but if you add up like personal trips in cars so if you're a driver or a passenger or in a taxi or minicab right that is 3.4 billion a year wow so that's still way ahead yeah yeah now now obviously you need to encourage as much active travel and walk and cycle as you can and encourage as much public transport as you can but you know that gives you a couple of imperatives for all of the public services you've got to find a way of moving it to zero emission as quickly as you can for that yes pluses and for taxis um and there is also this recognition which is sometimes tough for um i guess orthodox urban planning is you've got to do something with the car there's going to be even if you cut you know even if you get rid of a billion trips there's still going to be two and a half billion in cars and that's a lot so you've got to um yeah you've got to try and do it all which is you know that's the impossible challenge but yeah yeah it is amazing progress i mean i do remember my daughter who's now working you know she's got a job very proud started last week um and she um i remember you know as a little kid once we were standing by a bus stop and there was that like puff of soot and she turned around and it was probably like like a slapstick silver yeah yeah and that was and that was you know 20 years ago 22 years ago so the transformation is is quite amazing but but miles behind china in many cities yes well i mean i don't because i don't know about all i mean certainly miles behind shanghai it's the only place i've been i don't know about all the other cities but i mean it's still but i mean to be fair miles ahead of new delhi which has recently had some truly horrific uh and and mumbai has been really bad recently isn't it so what was it world health organization is it seven million deaths a year from poor air quality yeah it's just like pretty shocking professor chris chris witty yeah he was the chief medical officer he did a report on air quality in the uk this is a bit oh dear i'm gonna get morbid so so um so he it was the end of 2022 he did this study about air quality and there's a bit in it uh i i don't know why i'm focusing on this but it was going through the like the causes of morbidity morbidity in the uk so that the top killer in the uk is like dementia at 66 000 and then it's like heart disease 58 000 and like strokes is 30 000 and air quality is it it's a diffuse impact so you know um but but it encourages morbidity and you put the annual figure in the UK is I think it was between uh 28 and 36 ,000 deaths in the UK a year right it's pretty shocking that really yeah it is yeah um so I mean I think the other thing that I realized as I've got older is you've got to die of something which is slightly morbid thing you know there's something's going to get you in the end but uh but yeah no I mean it's so obvious that Well, I mean, there was the tragic case, which I think we mentioned when we've spoken before, and I can't remember her whole name, Kissy Deborah, the little girl who died of sort of asthmatic things.

40:58And that was, she's the first human being to be, or in the UK, to have cause of death on her death certificate, air pollution, which was really hard. You know, for some of it, there is no safe level, you know. It's just better not to breathe it in. It doesn't matter how small it gets, you know. um no it's better to breathe clean air that's what i mean yes yes i think that's a general a general i do remember talking to a postgrad student at i don't know if i've ever mentioned this to you at um westminster university which is on the euston road as i call it you story near madame to swords sort of up that area yeah very busy through route and they have an air monitoring box it's still there with all the little sensors up in the air one postgrad student took one of the monitors and put it down at sort of knee level and up at the top it was reading it was not good but it was sort of you know tolerable and they put it down at any level it was he called it a a thick top uh carcinogenic soup and of course i mean it was only a few months earlier i'd pushed my son along that road in a push jail oh gosh so his his mouth and his breathing was at like two feet above the ground which was lethal absolutely we got we got to turn this positive this is like This is dark.

42:12But that was, I mean, my son is now 32, so he survived and he's also lived for 30 years and it was 30. It would have been like 30 years ago. Wow. So it has changed. I mean, what are the next biggest challenges? I mean, I think we've covered quite a few of them, but I mean, is there any kind of outstanding? So talk it nationally, right? Like maybe out of a London context. So there's always going to be government policy. So national government, like, I don't know, we could talk about the past and we can talk about present, right? So this agenda, where did it start? I mean, it started back in 2007, 2008, when the UK government was bringing in the Climate Change Act, which was this first legal structure that commises the economy to decarbon, to lower carbon.

43:11And some of the things that drove it then are the same as now. So, you know, one of the drivers behind it then was reduced carbon emissions and improved air quality. Yep. And there was also this sort of energy system benefit. You know, so as the UK moves towards more renewable energy, more energy independence, particularly relying on wind, then um there is this point that you're gonna need a way of managing the intermittency of renewables so yeah ability to to take more energy when it's there's a surplus and then either charge or not charge or even provide energy back electricity back when it's not blowing at all um so there was this sort of systemic benefit but i think the other big benefit was like jobs and economy um so back at back in then this is the late noughties you know the more advanced automotive OEMs were deciding on where to build their first EV factory.

44:10So yeah, Andy Palmer, friend of the pod, right? He was the CEO of Nissan. I guess I was on the other side of the government table to him. Right. Trying to get that built in Sunderland. And by the way, you know, it's an amazing thing. I remember going there a few years later, you see the car factory working in Sunderland next to the battery plant, making the batteries there. I remember we put on hard hats and went into Gateshead College, who were building like a low-carbon engineering college. You know, it's this holistic thing. It's jobs and economic benefit. And a lot of that is still the same now.

44:45And I think you say, well, what needs to come next is that you need to find ways of getting businesses to adopt this because it makes commercial and operational sense, not just because you're being told to by policy um and there's one thing i've told we've spoken about this before but um you know there's this question of how do you get the cfo interested yeah of a big business right and that's the chief financial chief financial officer how do you get them how do you get you know the people who are responsible yeah the money people interested because you likely you'll get a sustainability officer interested great flying the flag but you know you've won the battle if you've won the CFO.