Jim Le Maistre has done the homework showing the futility of substituting electric cars for gas-powered vehicles. Entrepreneurs and the media have failed to inform us the EVs require almost 1/3 more energy per kilometer travelled than conventional cars. His document is Electric Cars Increase Energy Demand 31% over Gas Cars. Some of his exhibits are reproduced below to express the thrust of his analysis.
Science Matters 
I am involved with a group that has researched the studies on this. We will be producing a paper as evidence for the UK Government that references many of the others C2G Analyses. Would you like it? Here is one of themm.
https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2021/02/e-mobility-is-already-this-much-more-climate-neutral-today.html
Interesting. It assumes one battery and 200,000 km, so 120K miles.. One battery? in perhaps 10, more like 15 years. Really?
My take aways:
– Diesel and EV cars have the same emissions.
– Petrol only 17% more on these figures.
– And a Hybrid would be significantly better.
Just sayin’
LikeLike
Interesting article. Sounds like he doesn’t like electricity of any kind. It does emphasize that this free energy for cars isn’t free.
No one mentions the infrastructure required for the increased electrical demand. A multi-station recharging facility like a gas station requires several megawatt electrical input. (A 100kWh battery recharged in 30 minutes takes 0.2 MWhr of electricity, without considering loss). The supporting power lines, transformers, etc, come from where? I spoke with a construction engineer who puts in the small renewable power plants of the company I worked for. Costs of conduit and copper wire are going out of sight. This is before the construction of the brave new world of all electric.
LikeLike
Thanks Bob. I also got the impression that the author thinks electricity is a problem because CO2 emissions must be reduced. Thus he is aware of the contradiction thinking EVs are a solution to the climate “problem.” IMO EVs are a non-solution to a non-problem, and will be disasterous for society.
LikeLike
For the trivia file.
The Oxford definition of renewable energy is energy from a source that is not depleted when used, such as wind or solar power. The first law of thermodynamics has been repealed? Or can I find a bucket of renewable wind or photons around a renewable energy site?
I spent about 20 years in renewable energy: landfill gas methane to electricity. As long as you kept feeding garbage to the landfill, you kept getting methane. As soon as you capped the landfill, the methane production decreased. It is considered renewable, all evidence to the contrary.
LikeLike
Bob, some years ago I posted an essay by Darrin Qualman, There are just two sources of energy
“Our petro-industrial civilization produces and consumes a seemingly diverse suite of energies: oil, coal, ethanol, hydroelectricity, gasoline, geothermal heat, hydrogen, solar power, propane, uranium, wind, wood, dung. At the most foundational level, however, there are just two sources of energy. Two sources provide more than 99 percent of the power for our civilization: solar and nuclear.
Every other significant energy source is a form of one of these two. Most are forms of solar.
When we burn wood we release previously captured solar energy. The firelight we see and the heat we feel are energies from sunlight that arrived decades ago. That sunlight was transformed into chemical energy in the leaves of trees and used to form wood. And when we burn that wood, we turn that chemical-bond energy back into light and heat. Energy from wood is a form of contemporary solar energy because it embodies solar energy mostly captured years or decades ago, as distinct from fossil energy sources such as coal and oil that embody solar energy captured many millions of years ago.
Straw and other biomass are a similar story: contemporary solar energy stored as chemical-bond energy then released through oxidation in fire. Ethanol, biodiesel, and other biofuels are also forms of contemporary solar energy (though subsidized by the fossil fuels used to create fertilizers, fuels, etc.).
Coal, natural gas, and oil products such as gasoline and diesel fuel are also, fundamentally, forms of solar energy, but not contemporary solar energy: fossil. The energy in fossil fuels is the sun’s energy that fell on leaves and algae in ancient forests and seas. When we burn gasoline in our cars, we are propelled to the corner store by ancient sunlight.
Wind power is solar energy. Heat from the sun creates air-temperature differences that drive air movements that can be turned into electrical energy by wind turbines, mechanical work by windmills, or geographic motion by sailing ships.
Hydroelectric power is solar energy. The sun evaporates and lifts water from oceans, lakes, and other water bodies, and that water falls on mountains and highlands where it is aggregated by terrain and gravity to form the rivers that humans dam to create hydro-power.
Of course, solar energy (both photovoltaic electricity and solar-thermal heat) is solar energy.
Approximately 86 percent of our non-food energy comes from fossil-solar sources such as oil, natural gas, and coal. Another 9 percent comes from contemporary solar sources, mostly hydro-electric, with a small but rapidly growing contribution from wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels. In total, then, 95 percent of the energy we use comes from solar sources—contemporary or fossil.
As is obvious upon reflection, the Sun powers the Earth.”
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
LikeLike
Ron, “DC power grid”, DC>AC converters? Really?
Not here in Europe: power grid is 3ph high voltage AC, transformed down (in steps) to 3ph 400 Volt AC / 230 Volt AC for home use.
LikeLike
Adriaan, I think the DC>AC is firstly at the production end, exacerbated by wind and solar power (DC at orgin). Then at the user end, AC>DC is required not only for EVs but for large scale electricity consumers, such as datacentres.
There are countries, like Germany, using HVDC for long range transmission, and thus involve conversion for AC use.
LikeLike
Thank you Ron 👍 Never 2 old 2 learn 🤓 I wasn’t aware of the HVDC transmission lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current Nor the advantages…
LikeLike
DC power from large dams in Quebec enters at top right. This plant converts that to AC and dumps the power onto a large regional AC transmission line in Ayer Massachusetts at 42.5702N 71.5242W.
The expense of building and operating this plant is worth it due to the significant power savings of transmitting DC instead of AC. Synchronization was also a factor in using DC.
It looks like a tradeoff between losing power in transmission or in conversion. Either way ICE cars don’t have this problem.
LikeLike