I should probably write an entire seperate article on the truth about electric car batteries. There's so much more to take into consideration that I never even mentioned in this article.
Friend of mine works for the car industry, totally convinced electric cars are a huge scam, useless on the long run, hyper anti green for the minerals involved in the batteries.
As time goes by. We begin to truly realize. Climate Change has always been a plot to limit our freedoms and liberties. The Alarmism has become a nuisance.
Hi Peter. I am a huge fan of your tireless work, I always read your articles. I 100% agree with the sentiments and the fundamentals of your arguments set out here. However, the way the numbers are presented is not correct. In fact the situation is far, far worse than you have suggested here.
The issue is the conflation of power (measured in kW) and energy, which we can measure in kWh. If we have a car that has a maximum power output of 100kW, which would be about right for a small economical car, then you could drive it using its maximum power but only for one hour. If you drive more carefully then you would use less power than 100kW so you could drive for more than one hour. But not orders of magnitude more. Let’s say you might be able to drive for a ‘few’ hours. This is not something most people expect to do per week. In other words, a typical car will use considerably more than 100kWh per week.
But this is moot. The numbers absolutely, categorically do not stack up. There isn’t/aren’t enough power stations, wind turbines, nuclear power stations, lithium, cobalt, copper and more to get even remotely close to the fantasy goals of the corrupt governments and globalist elite cabal. Your conclusion is bang on. This is not about the planet, never was. It’s about disenfranchisement of the people - power and control.
Great info. All the "green" technologies are highly dependent on hydrocarbons for their manufacture and distribution: also, most are made in China by slave labor.
Keep up the great work with this type stack: it's all about getting the word out to those who want to listen.
Hi Peter. Interesting thoughts, but do not forget to properly account for gigawatt-HOURS instead of "gigawatts", as these cars are charged at different moments. Please double check your calculations.
In my opinion, a better alternative would be to take some car data (I’ve used the Leaf, above) and get its estimated range and divide it by the battery power. Then, multiply that number by the average yearly travel and by the number of cars. In my sheet, I have arrived at around 484TWh/year (I didn't use the 400 million figure, but a 250 million one). The problem with that estimate is that it takes for granted the values presented by the manufacturer, which, even though multiplied by 0.7 by the epa to best reflect reality, is based on lab tests. That obviously disregards winter use.
My preferred method is getting the gasoline consumption and then converting it to energy. The EU consumes approximately 84 billion liters of gasoline per year (https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/gasoline_consumption/Europe/). Considering that only around 30% of that, on average, becomes usable power in a gas car, and that an electric car motor is ~85% efficient on average, I’d estimate, without accounting for winter, the cars would use around 380TW/Year. That doesn’t mean that’s the actual electricity they will draw from the grid, though. Taking into account an average charger efficiency of 85.7% and a transmission loss of around 6% (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7046253 and https://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/ respectively), you’d have an impact of ~472TWh/Year on the grid. If you’d like to guestimate more, you could even account for the European winter taking close to 29% of the year and that electric cars would be about 80% as efficient when temperature is close to 0°C, and that would mean a ~506TWh impact on the grid.
Now, that power could be supplied by 13 Gravelines nuclear stations. You’d need 209 Alta Wind Energy Centers or 176 Benban Solar parks, though, for a respective occupation of ~18000km² and 4500km² respectively. Now, that is if Europe could have the second, which is located in Egypt. But there is one small caveat. That amount was calculated based on gasoline usage alone, and Europeans love diesel cars.
All that said, that’s just the tip of the iceberg of electric car problems. Not only is the disposal of batteries troublesome, they are also very expensive (they cost almost as much as the car to replace). That probably means whomever can afford them would get a new car instead of buying a new battery, which would result in the entire car going to waste. Add to this problem the fact that any minor damage to the battery pack will result in the need to replace it. With all that in mind it is pretty obvious that electric cars are no substitute, for the masses, for gas and diesel powered ones.
The EU is ending food production in Europe. 3000 farms in the Netherlands being shut down initially. Germany pricing fertilizer so high it can’t be used. The issue of electric cars will be made moot as they starve the population to death. The ultimate goal.
In India,there is already a paucity of electricity and if I get an electric car,what sense does it make? Why not work on something sensible instead of being fools rushing in where angels fear to tread? Have human beings lost the capacity to think ahead of their own noses?
Fixing corruption in our systems is the one thing all people should stand in solidarity on. We need a #TransparencyMovement. Elon and Lex are right. The world is primed for one.
DEMANDING TRANSPARENCY: Our Systems Have Been Corrupted. Transparency is the Cure.
The politicians are good at making demands, but not good at providing the solutions. Critical thinking is not one of their attributes. Actually, thinking at all isn't one.
Not only will the new EV's become increasingly expensive because of limited resources for batteries and microchips, but the depreciation will fall quicker than a lead balloon because of the continually degrading batteries that are extremely expensive to replace. Some people buying second hand EV's will sit with an expensive headache when the battery stops working altogether or the range just becomes unusable. What a good way to further extract our wealth along with rampant inflation.
ICE cars could virtually last a lifetime. EV's are a throw-away and buy new situation. We are becoming a very throw-away wasteful society.
I should probably write an entire seperate article on the truth about electric car batteries. There's so much more to take into consideration that I never even mentioned in this article.
Friend of mine works for the car industry, totally convinced electric cars are a huge scam, useless on the long run, hyper anti green for the minerals involved in the batteries.
As time goes by. We begin to truly realize. Climate Change has always been a plot to limit our freedoms and liberties. The Alarmism has become a nuisance.
Hi Peter. I am a huge fan of your tireless work, I always read your articles. I 100% agree with the sentiments and the fundamentals of your arguments set out here. However, the way the numbers are presented is not correct. In fact the situation is far, far worse than you have suggested here.
The issue is the conflation of power (measured in kW) and energy, which we can measure in kWh. If we have a car that has a maximum power output of 100kW, which would be about right for a small economical car, then you could drive it using its maximum power but only for one hour. If you drive more carefully then you would use less power than 100kW so you could drive for more than one hour. But not orders of magnitude more. Let’s say you might be able to drive for a ‘few’ hours. This is not something most people expect to do per week. In other words, a typical car will use considerably more than 100kWh per week.
But this is moot. The numbers absolutely, categorically do not stack up. There isn’t/aren’t enough power stations, wind turbines, nuclear power stations, lithium, cobalt, copper and more to get even remotely close to the fantasy goals of the corrupt governments and globalist elite cabal. Your conclusion is bang on. This is not about the planet, never was. It’s about disenfranchisement of the people - power and control.
As another Substacker says, Do not comply.
Great info. All the "green" technologies are highly dependent on hydrocarbons for their manufacture and distribution: also, most are made in China by slave labor.
Keep up the great work with this type stack: it's all about getting the word out to those who want to listen.
Danny Huckabee
Hi Peter. Interesting thoughts, but do not forget to properly account for gigawatt-HOURS instead of "gigawatts", as these cars are charged at different moments. Please double check your calculations.
Thanks for always posting such great information.
Merry Christmas to you and your family . ( From Canada). It’s a ‘warm’, minus 31C here this morning.
That was a nice article. However, I believe using the power capacity of a battery to determine what the power consumption of a fleet of electric cars would be is a little bit misleading. For instance, considering the official numbers of the Nissan Leaf (https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/electric-cars/leaf/features/range-charging-battery.html), a driver charging the battery from 0 every week would end up driving a total of a little bit over 17000km every year. The average european driving is around 11300, with the highest value being around 16400 for Ireland (https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-sector/transport/distance-travelled-by-car.html). That does not mean there won’t be people recharging weekly, but most people won’t be.
In my opinion, a better alternative would be to take some car data (I’ve used the Leaf, above) and get its estimated range and divide it by the battery power. Then, multiply that number by the average yearly travel and by the number of cars. In my sheet, I have arrived at around 484TWh/year (I didn't use the 400 million figure, but a 250 million one). The problem with that estimate is that it takes for granted the values presented by the manufacturer, which, even though multiplied by 0.7 by the epa to best reflect reality, is based on lab tests. That obviously disregards winter use.
My preferred method is getting the gasoline consumption and then converting it to energy. The EU consumes approximately 84 billion liters of gasoline per year (https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/gasoline_consumption/Europe/). Considering that only around 30% of that, on average, becomes usable power in a gas car, and that an electric car motor is ~85% efficient on average, I’d estimate, without accounting for winter, the cars would use around 380TW/Year. That doesn’t mean that’s the actual electricity they will draw from the grid, though. Taking into account an average charger efficiency of 85.7% and a transmission loss of around 6% (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7046253 and https://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/ respectively), you’d have an impact of ~472TWh/Year on the grid. If you’d like to guestimate more, you could even account for the European winter taking close to 29% of the year and that electric cars would be about 80% as efficient when temperature is close to 0°C, and that would mean a ~506TWh impact on the grid.
Now, that power could be supplied by 13 Gravelines nuclear stations. You’d need 209 Alta Wind Energy Centers or 176 Benban Solar parks, though, for a respective occupation of ~18000km² and 4500km² respectively. Now, that is if Europe could have the second, which is located in Egypt. But there is one small caveat. That amount was calculated based on gasoline usage alone, and Europeans love diesel cars.
All that said, that’s just the tip of the iceberg of electric car problems. Not only is the disposal of batteries troublesome, they are also very expensive (they cost almost as much as the car to replace). That probably means whomever can afford them would get a new car instead of buying a new battery, which would result in the entire car going to waste. Add to this problem the fact that any minor damage to the battery pack will result in the need to replace it. With all that in mind it is pretty obvious that electric cars are no substitute, for the masses, for gas and diesel powered ones.
Anyway, great article, as always.
The EU is ending food production in Europe. 3000 farms in the Netherlands being shut down initially. Germany pricing fertilizer so high it can’t be used. The issue of electric cars will be made moot as they starve the population to death. The ultimate goal.
In India,there is already a paucity of electricity and if I get an electric car,what sense does it make? Why not work on something sensible instead of being fools rushing in where angels fear to tread? Have human beings lost the capacity to think ahead of their own noses?
I can't even get rid of an old dehumidifier or a regular car battery following my city's policy.
What about the EV car batteries? How will they be disposed of?
Well it’s only going to get worse. The climate change green Marxist death cult is in charge now.
‘United Kingdom Government Approves Climate Lockdown Trials For 2024’
Coming to a country near you comrade.
Fixing corruption in our systems is the one thing all people should stand in solidarity on. We need a #TransparencyMovement. Elon and Lex are right. The world is primed for one.
DEMANDING TRANSPARENCY: Our Systems Have Been Corrupted. Transparency is the Cure.
https://joshketry.substack.com/p/demanding-transparency-our-systems
The politicians are good at making demands, but not good at providing the solutions. Critical thinking is not one of their attributes. Actually, thinking at all isn't one.
Not only will the new EV's become increasingly expensive because of limited resources for batteries and microchips, but the depreciation will fall quicker than a lead balloon because of the continually degrading batteries that are extremely expensive to replace. Some people buying second hand EV's will sit with an expensive headache when the battery stops working altogether or the range just becomes unusable. What a good way to further extract our wealth along with rampant inflation.
ICE cars could virtually last a lifetime. EV's are a throw-away and buy new situation. We are becoming a very throw-away wasteful society.
It's all a scam. Some car manufacturers also starting to take subscriptions for turning certain features on and off. e.g heated seats. You basically rent them. (You will be happy and own nothing) All part of the same scam. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature