The public argument about electric vehicles has settled into two entrenched positions, neither of which is especially interested in detail. One holds that electrification solves road transport’s environmental problem. The other holds that it is an expensive imposition on ordinary drivers. Both skip past a set of genuinely difficult questions about weight, particulate pollution and who actually bears the cost of the transition, and those questions are becoming harder to avoid as the fleet turns over. Weight Is the Problem Underneath Several Others An electric car is substantially heavier than an equivalent petrol one, because batteries are heavy and the range…