A recent trip to the UK took me to the car park of a regional McDonalds.
This wasn’t your typical Maccas.
Toffee lattes aside, the most peculiar feature of this practically brand new site that caught my attention was the row of electric vehicle charging stations neatly laid out in the car park.
What a beautiful demonstration of the wonders of modern civilisation, engineering and innovation, you might say.
Or is it? The fee to use one of these stations to juice up your sparkling, heavily taxpayer-subsidised EVs is £0.92 per kWh (AUD$1.74 to you and me) during the morning rush hour period.
Most EVs available on the market right now use about 70 kWh to charge fully – ready to hit the road for 400km or so, according to AGL and the Electric Vehicle Council respectively.
That means you’d be paying just under $122 to charge your average electric car at this Maccas charging station, which I now know is one of 250 sites across the UK and Ireland delivered in partnership with a leading electric vehicle charging network.
By comparison, back home in Sydney it costs me much less than half of that – about $55 – to gas up my little 2012 Mazda 2 from close to empty now the worst of the Iran conflict is over.
Granted, EVs are cheaper to zap up here: 54c per kWh for the fast chargers and 59c for the ultra-fast.
Not to mention though the entry-level $30,000+ cost for this holier-than-thou hulk of metal and wire.
When I checked this week, you can buy a used 2020 Mazda for less than $20,000 or a used 2013 Mazda 2 Neo Sport with just 81,000km on the clock for $12,990.
The cost of used electric cars meanwhile has exploded in recent months, with data from AutoGrab showing a huge price jump in 2025-year EVs after the war in Iran broke out.
No doubt driven by cashed-up city types with too much discretionary spending at their mercy.
This new world the European continent is forcing its residents to live in, courtesy of ultra-ambitious EU mandates and national governments driven by green guilt, is picking up pace in Australia too.
No small thanks to Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen, who is wielding the incredible power afforded to him by Labor’s 94-seat supermajority to push this unaffordable technology on a population that is honestly more than happy to keep their petrol-powered car running.
A recent survey of some 1,100 Aussies conducted by Savvy’s Australian EV Sentiments Survey found 28 per cent of them would take a petrol or diesel-powered car over an electric vehicle.
That’s up from 16 per cent in 2023 and just 13 per cent back in 2021.
Only seven per cent of respondents said they already own an EV, with another 10 per cent saying they plan to buy one in the next year.
I recently called up a novated leasing company after seeing an advert that told me I could save tens of thousands of dollars in tax by hiring out an EV for a few years.
And who do these firms have to thank for being able to offer such a lucrative incentive?
You guessed it – the Honourable Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy.
The person at the other end of the phone quickly informed me this benefit was thanks to the Fringe Benefits Tax discount, which allows you to pay for your lease out of your pre-tax salary – thereby saving thousands of dollars in your end-of-year tax return.
Get in now, he told me, as this benefit is only slated to run until 31 March 2027.
In other words, the Albanese government wants you to sign up to their unachievable ideological crusade before it gets exposed as the social and financial con that so many of us see it to be.
In a glowing release last month, Mr Bowen spoke in entirely self-congratulatory terms about strong EV take-up in the outer suburbs, from Werribee to Kellyville.
No mention of the growing discontent and polarisation over the electric vehicle push.
For now, the free market still exists – sort of – yet to succumb to the globalist desires of Canberra progressives and their European mates.
And I will continue to drive my little petrol-powered car, encumbered as it is by failing electrics and the wear and tear that comes with an aging car.
I encourage anyone who’s my sort of age and doesn’t earn astronomical amounts of money working in fintech to do the same.
Charlie manages a team of commentators who contribute opinion content for SkyNews.com.au and is based at our Sydney bureau. He also works with Sky News’ on-air hosts and reporters to make sure their exclusives and analysis feature prominently on the homepage.