Hinkley goes electric

There was a time when I would havesniffed at the thought of relinquishing petrol as the source of my personalpropulsion. That’s changed now, mostly thanks to some proper engineering talentand research being applied to the alternatives — the alternatives we now knoware critical to managing the legacy we’ll leave our kids. I’ve got some ofthose too, of course, even if they’re nearly old enough to have kids of theirown.

Earlier this year I bought a 23-year-oldTriumph motorbike, which is older than both my kids, as a direct consequence ofLondon’s Ultra Low Emission Zone kicking in. The ULEZ means vehicles withcertain emissions pay a daily charge to travel through the centre of the city.The owner, a cross-town commuter, wasn’t prepared to pay an emissions tax and thereforesold three great bikes cheaply to buy something newer and cleaner.

I’ll be caught up in that initiativeeventually, as the same restrictions catch up with me, and I’m OK with thatbecause the alternatives aren’t rubbish anymore.

I was struck earlier this month when Triumph’s TE-1 collaborative two-year project was announced, alongside a little operation called Williams Advanced Engineering - which is pretty good at making things go fast. They'll develop specialist electric motorbike technology that will feed Triumph's own generation of electric machines! Supported and co-funded by the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV), via Innovate UK, it’ll hopefully give a fresh edge to a company I have a lot of time for, having been one of its earliest modern-day customers in the early ‘90s.

John Bloor’s Triumph is a really solidHinkley success story that took great British engineering and sold it to theworld. I’m guessing his team figured when you’re dealing with consumers, unlessthe alternatives to petrol are compelling for reasons beyond being worthy, and tree-hugging,they will never fully succeed. I hope the technology it produces starts feedingin to production machines before the ULEZ gets over the River Thames to myback-yard.

C’mon the clock’s ticking chaps.