Ah, the irony. We are in the midst of a global respiratory-illness pandemic, the economic consequences of which will almost certainly lead to more respiratory illness.

How so? Let’s start with the pandemic itself. COVID-19 is an often deadly and easily transmitted respiratory disease for which there is, at present, no cure, no defined treatment and no vaccine. Thus, isolation and quarantine orders have, in essence, frozen the global economy.

The economic mess is contributing to an oil glut. Demand has plummeted, even as Russia and the Saudis have chosen to flood the market with vast quantities of oil that the world does not need and cannot use. Meantime, automakers’ revenues have almost entirely disappeared as a result of a collapse of new vehicle sales – by as much as 80 per cent in the world’s biggest car markets.

To cope, car companies will now slash R&D spending to conserve cash during the global slump. E-mobility R&D will be very hard hit. No one can know precisely what this means for the wave of electrified vehicles planned for this decade, but there will be delays and cancellations.

Meantime, the economic crisis will almost certainly result in at least a temporary relaxation of environmental regulations and fuel economy standards. And because of slumping demand and a price war amongst the world’s largest producers, fuel hasn’t been this cheap in many years – creating an incentive for consumers to buy gas guzzlers.

We can expect, then, a surge in air pollution once the global economy springs back to life. That’s terrifying in a world where COVID-19 will be with us for at least the 12-18 months it will take to develop a vaccine.

COVID-19, you see, is particularly deadly for populations living with high levels of air pollution. A recent study from the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health found that those living in areas with high levels of air pollution – in particular, areas with troubling levels of the fine particulate matter produced by burning fossil fuels – suffer a higher death rate from COVID-19.

According to Green Car Reports, “Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter increases inflammation in the lungs,” Dr. Francesca Dominici, senior author of the study, told the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), adding, the lungs of people living in heavily-polluted areas may already be weakened before exposure to COVID-19.

“So basically, this is like adding gasoline to the fire,” Dominici said.

That study meshes with what researchers from the University of Siena in Italy and Aarhus University in Denmark have suggested. They see evidence that the high level of pollution in Northern Italy should be considered an additional co-factor in COVID-19 fatalities recorded in that area. Their work, notes Green Car Reports in a separate article, can be found in the journal Environmental Pollution.

Ah, air pollution. Before the pandemic rampaged out of China and into the rest of the world, infecting millions and killing tens of thousands, the world’s automakers were on track to spend hundreds of billions on electrified vehicles designed to reduce tailpipe pollution dramatically. But in just weeks, much of what the auto industry was planning for EVs has been put in jeopardy.

IHS Markit has found that the economic impact of COVID-19 is savaging the research and development (R&D) budgets of automakers the world over. Of the 140 companies surveyed, 92 per cent expect R&D budgets to shrink substantially in the next 12 months. With revenues being hammered by frozen economic activity, automakers are moving quickly to cut costs and preserve cash.

Electrification comes under the heading of “advanced research,” and IHS Markit found “Advanced research projects are expected to be more impacted in both 2020 and 2021 when compared to general product development activities” by OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). That is, updating existing gasoline and diesel models for “immediate product launches” will be a higher priority than advanced projects.

Big, dreamy R&D projects will suffer budget cuts by 17 per cent this year and perhaps 12 per cent in 2021. What does this mean for electrification?

“E-Mobility technology around battery, e-motor and power electronics emerges as the area which will be more negatively impacted by COVID-19 according to respondents to our survey (22% of respondents),” notes IHS Markit. “This seems linked to an expectation that fuel economy/CO2 regulation is expected to be relaxed, particularly in Europe.”

Less regulation and all that cheap fuel will almost certainly result in a sharp rise in transport-related air pollution once economies come back to life. We know that air pollution adds “gasoline to the fire” when lungs are being attacked by COVID-19.

So, a health crisis which triggered an economic crisis will in turn contribute further to a health crisis that was in part being addressed by a huge investment in electrified vehicles.

And then there’s climate change…