Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Swartz
To clarify, was referring in terms of technologies to improvements in battery technology.
You keep saying this, and I maintain it just isn't true. The profile of the electricity grid is an important factor, and it depends on what assumptions you make there. Having said that, I'll cite a few data points:
- Argonne National Laboratory, developer of the Greet model for evaluating emissions for both EV and gas-powered vehicles over their lifetimes, has estimated that on average the emissions for gas-powered vehicles will be much higher.
- A Reuters analysis of different scenarios found that even in the worst-case scenario of charging entirely from a coal-powered grid, EV emissions are still better, though not by a particularly large margin. This is because the initial cost of production is off-set by the fact that engines in EVs are about 95% energy efficient, while internal combustion engines are only about 20%. There is simply a huge gain in how well they use the energy.
Here's an article about another, older study: Even electric cars powered by the dirtiest electricity emit fewer emissions than diesel cars, says new study | Electrek
- Damien Ernst, who claimed just a few years ago that to break even with a gas-powered vehicle in terms of emissions, an EV would need to be operational for 700,000 km, has revised that estimate greatly downward to 150,000 at most and sometimes half that amount, which is well less than the expected lifecycle of vehicles. This is just one illustration of what has generally happened when people take a serious look at the increasing amount of data available
- The estimated life of batteries is about 20 years. In other words, way longer than most people are going to be driving the car anyway. It's not like they are going to have to be constantly replaced.
I'm not aware of significant recent studies funded by independent parties - i.e. not the oil industry for example - that contradict these. Do you have contrary ones to cite? |
What's interesting is that you cite a study from a group that exists to lobby governments to get to net zero. I doubt their biases are any different from any other group that exists to lobby for any other cause.
This is one baseline study -
Just a moment... - it doesn't get into some of the more hard-to-figure costs, like where are you getting the materials and is slavery involved in extracting them. What do you do if EV sales become significant (right now, what, 2% of the cars on the road are EV?) and you need more materials than you could possibly extract? China is clearly trying to control world supplies of some of these materials, what's the price then? But look at the world supply of these rare-earth metals and mining today and extrapolate. At copper as well.
If you can get 20 years out of a battery, great. But keep in mind that real life doesn't have perfect weather, charges only between the ideal ranges, keeps everything in perfect condition. There are no 20-year-old Tesla batteries to check and the warranties supplied with the cars do not stand behind these claims - they know it's only theory. So if you're sitting at 100,000 miles and you're still getting over 90% of range, great, it worked. Congrats.
What did you win, then. If you can afford the entry cost, the taxpayers pay for the rest of your Tesla. They pay for your charging stations and you pay a nominal cost to "fill up". And what do you save on emissions themselves? Maybe something, maybe not (anything that shows maybe not is clearly written by the oil industry, I guess, and anything that shows it is - definitely not by lobbyists connected to the green industries). All the EV market is right now is wealthy people (almost 80% of EV owners have household incomes >$100k) feeling good about themselves while taking money from the government.
Let's assume EVs become a large share of the marketplace. How do they get charged? This $7.5 billion handout will put some charging stations out there. How long does it take to fast-charge a Tesla? 20 minutes? The handout gives you four of these at reasonable spots on the interstates. That should cover demand today - when I go past a single charging station these days, more often than not, it's empty. But if more people get them, that's a lot of waiting.
Still not an insurmountable problem. Right now, highway rest stops have 10-12 bays, let's say five minutes for a tank. So you could conceive of EV coverage with about 30-35 bays. Only eight times as much as what they're going to build in the next few years.
Where does the electricity come from for this? That is quite a drain. And as renewables come on line, so do relative dead periods. Already, at 2%, we're starting to see restrictions on home charging. And the Finland example I just gave you. You might spend (or the government might spend) a lot of money to install a charging station at your home (if your insurance company doesn't drop you), and then you can't use it a lot of the time. Once EV use becomes more common, this will only get worse. A lot worse.
We don't know where this is going. We have increased the cost of energy. We have reduced energy security (in the US, power outages have doubled in the last ten years alone). We have regions of the US and Canada (Michigan and the plains, California, Ontario) that are projected to produce less energy than they need in the very near future. The one technology we have that seems to help reach every goal the most - nuclear plants - for some reason are hated by the greens more than the dirtiest coal mines. And then we add this EV thing on top of it at enormous cost. And the wealthy people who feel good about their new EVs don't think for a minute how the increasing costs of keeping the lights on and the furnaces running affect the billions of people around the world who live on a few dollars a day.