The car you drive can say much about the kind of person you are and, for people who love their cars, that’s just the way they like it.

In literature, cars are used as a metaphor for the hopes, values, and motives of characters. Whether it’s James Bond’s Aston Martin, Jay Gatsby’s Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, or Endeavour Morse’s 1960 Jaguar, the wheels they drive talk figuratively of how they live their lives.

The character with whom I have come to most associate through my car - an electric Mercedes 250 EQA - is Josef K, the hapless and unwitting victim of bureaucratic tyranny in Franz Kafka’s The Trial.

For anyone who hasn’t read the novel, it is a psychological horror tale about a lowly bank clerk who is arrested and charged with an unspecified crime. Despite being entirely innocent, he is unable to defend himself because he can’t access any information about his case, and every attempt he makes to discover any, only serves to accelerate his inevitable demise.

This parable of the excesses of modern bureaucracy and the madness of totalitarianism accurately describes how it feels to be the reluctant owner of an electric car in 2024.

For anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating, consider this. Through an initial desire to help Scotland reach its net zero target, I am locked into a four-year, £500-a-month lease agreement for a car that I can’t use in any meaningful way and yet am also unable to hand back or to trade in for an alternative model.

It seems that every attempt I make to drive the car simply exposes me to new and hidden charges and fines and even trying to find out who is ultimately responsible for it is to become lost........

© Herald Scotland