Jim Kenzie is on Motoring TV in Canada. He drives new cars and talks about their
likes and dislikes. He is very down to the point and this column is no
exception.
Electric cars are a short circuit
It’s clear from recent events in the Excited States of America that not
only are facts irrelevant in the realm of public and political
discourse, they may even be harmful to whatever cause you’re trying to
promote.
But unlike lawyers, politicians and bureaucrats whose very existence often
hinges on ignoring the facts, I — as an engineer and journalist —
still feel beholden to them.
So, here are a few facts to consider on the subject of electric
cars.
Contrary to what may be at least a common — if not popular — opinion, I don’t
hate electric cars. They never did anything to
me.
I have often said that an electric motor is an excellent way to power an
automobile. We’ve known that an electric car is quiet, quick, simple
and durable since before the Baker Electric went out of production in
1914.
It’s what supplies the electricity that’s the problem, and has been since
that Baker Electric ran out of juice.
I don’t even hate battery-powered cars. It’s science that hates
battery-powered cars.
A friend of mine worked on the EV-1, General Motors’ first shot at a
modern battery-powered car. When he left that project, his parting
gift from his colleagues was a 75-foot-long extension cord, which I
thought was terribly funny.
He also came out of that experience saying that there are three types of
liars in this world: liars, damned liars, and battery
engineers.
They have been promising us ‘the’ battery breakthrough ever since the
demise of that poor old Baker, and we’re not a heck of a lot farther
along that road than we were then. Certainly, there’s been nowhere
near the progress we’ve seen in petroleum-fuelled
cars.
At the moment, the best range a battery-powered car that is even within
sight of an affordable price can deliver is 383 kilometres, in the new
Chevrolet Bolt EV.
Although, as I said in my preview of that car a couple of months back, what that
range might be in Winnipeg in February has not been announced
Apart from the quietness, there’s nothing about the Bolt that wouldn’t be
better if it had a modern Diesel engine in it.
It would triple its range, you could ‘recharge’ that range fully in five
minutes, not nine to 60 hours, from a delivery infrastructure that is
already in place literally everywhere in the world, and which would
not require you (or likely for most urban dwellers, your landlord) to
install a multi-thousand dollar Level 2 charging station where you
live.
“Yes,” the electric car fanatics cry, “but Diesel is a fossil fuel!”
True.
But, depending on where you live in North America, chances are very good so
is your electricity, because it is generated by burning something —
usually natural gas.
And burning a fossil fuel to power an electric car is nowhere near as
efficient as burning that fuel to power the car
directly.
That grotesque creature whose name will never sully my column but who
managed to lose the election down south yet still gain the presidency,
has said he will bring coal back. So, good luck on that
front.
I can’t deny electric cars have zero emissions at the tailpipe. But
tailpipe emissions have pretty much become last century’s
problem.
According to Environment Canada, cars and light vehicles — our personal
transportation fleet — are responsible for only 12 per cent of
greenhouse gas emissions. As older cars get phased out and newer cars
get ever cleaner, that percentage is likely
dropping.
So, even if tomorrow morning, all cars in our fleet were magically powered
by the sheer force of Elon Musk’s ambition, 88 per cent of the problem
would still be here.
Electric cars currently (ho ho ...) hover around one per cent share of the
market. Let’s assume that the wildest dreams of battery-powered car
fans are achieved, and that market share increases tenfold in the next
10 years That’s 10 per cent of new car sales.
But remember that modern cars often last 10 or more years (both of my
Volkswagen Diesels are well over that already). People aren’t going to
instantly throw out their perfectly good three-, four-, five- or even
10-year-old car to buy a battery-powered electric car, so it will take
another 10 years or so for 10 per cent of our total automotive fleet
to be battery-powered.
So, doing the math, 20 years from now, we will have reduced the total
automotive contribution to greenhouse gas emissions in our country by
one tenth of 12 per cent. i.e.,1.2 per cent. Start planning the
parade!
All the costs of installing the recharging infrastructure, not to mention
the millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bribes largely to rich
people to buy their third or fourth car to park beside their Escalade,
for a 1.2 per cent improvement in our atmosphere?
Hey, I’ve got grandchildren. I want a cleaner atmosphere as much as or more
than anybody Is this the best bang-for-the-buck we can get? Not even
close.
The low-hanging fruit is in areas like concrete production, which by some
credible estimates is responsible for 30 per cent of CO2
emissions.
How ridiculous then is it that Quebec, which does have hydro power to
spare, is giving $8,600 to those rich folks for their electric
playtoy, while also giving a $2-billion grant to build a concrete
plant in the Gaspe where there is zero demand for concrete? Like I
said, politicians and facts.
Even in the realm of transportation, if we were to use those billions of
taxpayer dollars to build roundabouts at every conceivable location,
instantly we’d save way more fuel and reduce pollution faster than
electric cars ever could. And, save thousands of lives and billions of
dollars on hospital and car repair bills at the same
time.
So, the facts are that battery-powered cars’ impact on our atmosphere is
effectively a non-issue.
There are other environmental facts to consider. Where do the batteries come
from? Most car batteries today and in the foreseeable future are based
on such benign elements as nickel and lithium.
Much of our nickel still comes from the Sudbury region, where it is mined
using Diesel-powered equipment. It is shipped by Diesel-powered trains
to the west coast, loaded onto bunker-C-fuelled tankers, and shipped
to China, where it is loaded back on to Diesel-powered trains and sent
to the battery factories.
The finished batteries go back onto Diesel-powered trains to China’s east
coast, are loaded onto bunker-C-fuelled tankers and shipped back to
North America, where they once again are loaded onto Diesel-powered
trains and shipped to the car assembly plants. So, that’s nice and
clean.
Lithium?
Hello, Galaxy Note 7 ...
We’ve had a lot of fun over the last few decades with OPEC — the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Wait ’til they form
OLEC — the Organization of Lithium Exporting Countries, which if it
existed would currently consist of Bolivia and China, with Russia
applying for membership. Oh, goody — let’s stake our future on those
bastions of freedom and liberal democracy.
The next environmental issue we will have to deal with is when a car’s
battery is done, what do we do with it? In the Bolt for example,
that’s 450 kilograms of toxic sludge.
There are lots of opinions on how long electric car batteries will last, but
nobody knows for sure because they haven’t been around long
enough.
The company with the most experience is Toyota with their hybrids. They
say essentially that the battery lasts ‘the life of the car,’ which is
another way of saying ‘when the battery is done, so is the car.’
That’s not quite true, because there are many instances of Priuses
getting new batteries.
The lifespan and the warranty seem to be in the 10-year/320,000-km region,
again less than my VWs have gone, and the replacement cost is in the
low thousands of dollars. So, for a car that old, not likely to be a
viable option, although for young year-wise but high-mileage
applications like taxis, it might work.
And that’s for a hybrid, where the battery doesn’t do all the heavy
lifting. In a pure electric, who knows?
We do know that battery lifespan depends on how many charge cycles it
goes through, and at what temperature.
All pure battery-electric cars are set up so they never charge fully nor
discharge fully, because either extreme shortens battery life
considerably.
Again, Chevrolet’s Bolt EV offers a clue as to lifespan, with an eight-year,
160,000-km warranty on its battery.
To me, that doesn’t seem very long, mileage-wise especially, but that’s
all they’re going to cover you for. After that, you’re on your
own.
But the larger problem for society — what happens to all those toxic
chemicals when the battery IS done?
We know how to recycle every milligram of a conventional car, and
presumably somebody will come up with solutions and facilities for
batteries, too. But we don’t have them yet, certainly not in the
volume we’re going to need if electrics do become a big part of our
fleet. Which they won’t; jus’ sayin’ ..
Another topic electric car fans don’t seem to want to talk about — where is
the electricity going to come from? Do you have any idea how much
petroleum is burned by our transportation fleet daily? It’s got to be
in the hundreds of thousands of barrels.
Yet, I remind you it still only contributes 12 per cent of our greenhouse
gas emissions. Where is that much ‘replacement’ electricity going to
come from? Nuclear is the cleanest option. But after Three Mile
Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, how many new reactors are going to be
built in your back yard? And electricity doesn’t travel well, so they
would have to be near population centres.
B.C., Quebec and a few other places in North America have cheap hydro power.
How many more multi-thousand hectare tracts of most likely aboriginal
land are going to be flooded to build more of
those?
People driving Teslas today probably have a house big enough and are wealthy
enough to install solar panels on their roofs. What about the huge
percentage of Canadians who live in apartment buildings? Where are
their solar panels going to go?
There will never be enough windmills to make up the difference. And even if
we do generate that electricity, how do we get it to the
people?
A few Christmases ago, we found out how robust Toronto’s electricity
distribution infrastructure is; an ice storm shut the city down for a
week.
Let’s plug 500,000 cars into that every night and see what happens. The city
burns to the ground, is what happens.
What’s more, and as previously noted, an electric cars business model depends
on governments bribing potential customers with your and my tax
dollars. That’s $14,000 in Ontario, which I think is the highest bribe
in North America, mostly going to wealthy people who can afford any
car they want? For, as noted above, approximately zero societal
benefit? Why isn’t there rioting in the streets? Not to mention
encouraging electric car purchase with these bribes, then having
amongst the highest electricity prices anywhere? Better reread Adam
Smith, Premier Wynne.
Listen, if you want to spend your own money buying an electric car and pretend
you are saving the planet, fill yer boots. Likewise, if you want to
spend your own money buying a Porsche and pretend you’re driving on
the Nurburgring on your way to work. Just don’t expect me to be happy
with the government using my taxes to help you fulfil either fantasy.
When any battery-powered car can compete on a level playing field
without tax-funded bribes, give me a call.
So, as it stands, battery-powered electric cars have zero chance of ever
becoming more than small fraction of our fleet. For urban delivery
vehicles which have predetermined routes and which can plugged in
easily overnight, sure. Car-sharing services? Maybe. Both, of course,
remain limited by how much electricity can be delivered safely and
economically to their charging stations.
Dieter Zetsche, head of Daimler Benz, said recently that he sees
Mercedes-Benz eventually becoming as much as 25 per cent electric.
Last time I looked, when the score in a basketball game was 75-25, the
team with 25 was losing big time.
Like I said, at best, battery-powered electric cars will never be but a
small percentage of our fleet.
Now, there is a technological solution that will achieve the environmental,
transportation and economic goals we all share.
It’s hydrogen fuel cells. That’s a topic for another
day.
But the technology and the infrastructure are both closer than most people
think. It’s the only feasible long-term solution.
And the more time and resources we waste on stopgap short-circuits like
battery-powered electric cars, the farther we are from achieving those
goals.
Can’t we just get on with it?
If I read this right and let say 50% of people start driving electric cars, this means consumption of electricity will more than double, so more electric plants will have to be built, the taxpayers will have to foot the bill, the electric car owners will have to pay for electricity to charge his batteries which will probably cost him ten time more than it cost him right now to fill his car with regular gasoline at the gas station.....hell man I'm buying myself a bike.
likes and dislikes. He is very down to the point and this column is no
exception.
Electric cars are a short circuit
It’s clear from recent events in the Excited States of America that not
only are facts irrelevant in the realm of public and political
discourse, they may even be harmful to whatever cause you’re trying to
promote.
But unlike lawyers, politicians and bureaucrats whose very existence often
hinges on ignoring the facts, I — as an engineer and journalist —
still feel beholden to them.
So, here are a few facts to consider on the subject of electric
cars.
Contrary to what may be at least a common — if not popular — opinion, I don’t
hate electric cars. They never did anything to
me.
I have often said that an electric motor is an excellent way to power an
automobile. We’ve known that an electric car is quiet, quick, simple
and durable since before the Baker Electric went out of production in
1914.
It’s what supplies the electricity that’s the problem, and has been since
that Baker Electric ran out of juice.
I don’t even hate battery-powered cars. It’s science that hates
battery-powered cars.
A friend of mine worked on the EV-1, General Motors’ first shot at a
modern battery-powered car. When he left that project, his parting
gift from his colleagues was a 75-foot-long extension cord, which I
thought was terribly funny.
He also came out of that experience saying that there are three types of
liars in this world: liars, damned liars, and battery
engineers.
They have been promising us ‘the’ battery breakthrough ever since the
demise of that poor old Baker, and we’re not a heck of a lot farther
along that road than we were then. Certainly, there’s been nowhere
near the progress we’ve seen in petroleum-fuelled
cars.
At the moment, the best range a battery-powered car that is even within
sight of an affordable price can deliver is 383 kilometres, in the new
Chevrolet Bolt EV.
Although, as I said in my preview of that car a couple of months back, what that
range might be in Winnipeg in February has not been announced
Apart from the quietness, there’s nothing about the Bolt that wouldn’t be
better if it had a modern Diesel engine in it.
It would triple its range, you could ‘recharge’ that range fully in five
minutes, not nine to 60 hours, from a delivery infrastructure that is
already in place literally everywhere in the world, and which would
not require you (or likely for most urban dwellers, your landlord) to
install a multi-thousand dollar Level 2 charging station where you
live.
“Yes,” the electric car fanatics cry, “but Diesel is a fossil fuel!”
True.
But, depending on where you live in North America, chances are very good so
is your electricity, because it is generated by burning something —
usually natural gas.
And burning a fossil fuel to power an electric car is nowhere near as
efficient as burning that fuel to power the car
directly.
That grotesque creature whose name will never sully my column but who
managed to lose the election down south yet still gain the presidency,
has said he will bring coal back. So, good luck on that
front.
I can’t deny electric cars have zero emissions at the tailpipe. But
tailpipe emissions have pretty much become last century’s
problem.
According to Environment Canada, cars and light vehicles — our personal
transportation fleet — are responsible for only 12 per cent of
greenhouse gas emissions. As older cars get phased out and newer cars
get ever cleaner, that percentage is likely
dropping.
So, even if tomorrow morning, all cars in our fleet were magically powered
by the sheer force of Elon Musk’s ambition, 88 per cent of the problem
would still be here.
Electric cars currently (ho ho ...) hover around one per cent share of the
market. Let’s assume that the wildest dreams of battery-powered car
fans are achieved, and that market share increases tenfold in the next
10 years That’s 10 per cent of new car sales.
But remember that modern cars often last 10 or more years (both of my
Volkswagen Diesels are well over that already). People aren’t going to
instantly throw out their perfectly good three-, four-, five- or even
10-year-old car to buy a battery-powered electric car, so it will take
another 10 years or so for 10 per cent of our total automotive fleet
to be battery-powered.
So, doing the math, 20 years from now, we will have reduced the total
automotive contribution to greenhouse gas emissions in our country by
one tenth of 12 per cent. i.e.,1.2 per cent. Start planning the
parade!
All the costs of installing the recharging infrastructure, not to mention
the millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bribes largely to rich
people to buy their third or fourth car to park beside their Escalade,
for a 1.2 per cent improvement in our atmosphere?
Hey, I’ve got grandchildren. I want a cleaner atmosphere as much as or more
than anybody Is this the best bang-for-the-buck we can get? Not even
close.
The low-hanging fruit is in areas like concrete production, which by some
credible estimates is responsible for 30 per cent of CO2
emissions.
How ridiculous then is it that Quebec, which does have hydro power to
spare, is giving $8,600 to those rich folks for their electric
playtoy, while also giving a $2-billion grant to build a concrete
plant in the Gaspe where there is zero demand for concrete? Like I
said, politicians and facts.
Even in the realm of transportation, if we were to use those billions of
taxpayer dollars to build roundabouts at every conceivable location,
instantly we’d save way more fuel and reduce pollution faster than
electric cars ever could. And, save thousands of lives and billions of
dollars on hospital and car repair bills at the same
time.
So, the facts are that battery-powered cars’ impact on our atmosphere is
effectively a non-issue.
There are other environmental facts to consider. Where do the batteries come
from? Most car batteries today and in the foreseeable future are based
on such benign elements as nickel and lithium.
Much of our nickel still comes from the Sudbury region, where it is mined
using Diesel-powered equipment. It is shipped by Diesel-powered trains
to the west coast, loaded onto bunker-C-fuelled tankers, and shipped
to China, where it is loaded back on to Diesel-powered trains and sent
to the battery factories.
The finished batteries go back onto Diesel-powered trains to China’s east
coast, are loaded onto bunker-C-fuelled tankers and shipped back to
North America, where they once again are loaded onto Diesel-powered
trains and shipped to the car assembly plants. So, that’s nice and
clean.
Lithium?
Hello, Galaxy Note 7 ...
We’ve had a lot of fun over the last few decades with OPEC — the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Wait ’til they form
OLEC — the Organization of Lithium Exporting Countries, which if it
existed would currently consist of Bolivia and China, with Russia
applying for membership. Oh, goody — let’s stake our future on those
bastions of freedom and liberal democracy.
The next environmental issue we will have to deal with is when a car’s
battery is done, what do we do with it? In the Bolt for example,
that’s 450 kilograms of toxic sludge.
There are lots of opinions on how long electric car batteries will last, but
nobody knows for sure because they haven’t been around long
enough.
The company with the most experience is Toyota with their hybrids. They
say essentially that the battery lasts ‘the life of the car,’ which is
another way of saying ‘when the battery is done, so is the car.’
That’s not quite true, because there are many instances of Priuses
getting new batteries.
The lifespan and the warranty seem to be in the 10-year/320,000-km region,
again less than my VWs have gone, and the replacement cost is in the
low thousands of dollars. So, for a car that old, not likely to be a
viable option, although for young year-wise but high-mileage
applications like taxis, it might work.
And that’s for a hybrid, where the battery doesn’t do all the heavy
lifting. In a pure electric, who knows?
We do know that battery lifespan depends on how many charge cycles it
goes through, and at what temperature.
All pure battery-electric cars are set up so they never charge fully nor
discharge fully, because either extreme shortens battery life
considerably.
Again, Chevrolet’s Bolt EV offers a clue as to lifespan, with an eight-year,
160,000-km warranty on its battery.
To me, that doesn’t seem very long, mileage-wise especially, but that’s
all they’re going to cover you for. After that, you’re on your
own.
But the larger problem for society — what happens to all those toxic
chemicals when the battery IS done?
We know how to recycle every milligram of a conventional car, and
presumably somebody will come up with solutions and facilities for
batteries, too. But we don’t have them yet, certainly not in the
volume we’re going to need if electrics do become a big part of our
fleet. Which they won’t; jus’ sayin’ ..
Another topic electric car fans don’t seem to want to talk about — where is
the electricity going to come from? Do you have any idea how much
petroleum is burned by our transportation fleet daily? It’s got to be
in the hundreds of thousands of barrels.
Yet, I remind you it still only contributes 12 per cent of our greenhouse
gas emissions. Where is that much ‘replacement’ electricity going to
come from? Nuclear is the cleanest option. But after Three Mile
Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, how many new reactors are going to be
built in your back yard? And electricity doesn’t travel well, so they
would have to be near population centres.
B.C., Quebec and a few other places in North America have cheap hydro power.
How many more multi-thousand hectare tracts of most likely aboriginal
land are going to be flooded to build more of
those?
People driving Teslas today probably have a house big enough and are wealthy
enough to install solar panels on their roofs. What about the huge
percentage of Canadians who live in apartment buildings? Where are
their solar panels going to go?
There will never be enough windmills to make up the difference. And even if
we do generate that electricity, how do we get it to the
people?
A few Christmases ago, we found out how robust Toronto’s electricity
distribution infrastructure is; an ice storm shut the city down for a
week.
Let’s plug 500,000 cars into that every night and see what happens. The city
burns to the ground, is what happens.
What’s more, and as previously noted, an electric cars business model depends
on governments bribing potential customers with your and my tax
dollars. That’s $14,000 in Ontario, which I think is the highest bribe
in North America, mostly going to wealthy people who can afford any
car they want? For, as noted above, approximately zero societal
benefit? Why isn’t there rioting in the streets? Not to mention
encouraging electric car purchase with these bribes, then having
amongst the highest electricity prices anywhere? Better reread Adam
Smith, Premier Wynne.
Listen, if you want to spend your own money buying an electric car and pretend
you are saving the planet, fill yer boots. Likewise, if you want to
spend your own money buying a Porsche and pretend you’re driving on
the Nurburgring on your way to work. Just don’t expect me to be happy
with the government using my taxes to help you fulfil either fantasy.
When any battery-powered car can compete on a level playing field
without tax-funded bribes, give me a call.
So, as it stands, battery-powered electric cars have zero chance of ever
becoming more than small fraction of our fleet. For urban delivery
vehicles which have predetermined routes and which can plugged in
easily overnight, sure. Car-sharing services? Maybe. Both, of course,
remain limited by how much electricity can be delivered safely and
economically to their charging stations.
Dieter Zetsche, head of Daimler Benz, said recently that he sees
Mercedes-Benz eventually becoming as much as 25 per cent electric.
Last time I looked, when the score in a basketball game was 75-25, the
team with 25 was losing big time.
Like I said, at best, battery-powered electric cars will never be but a
small percentage of our fleet.
Now, there is a technological solution that will achieve the environmental,
transportation and economic goals we all share.
It’s hydrogen fuel cells. That’s a topic for another
day.
But the technology and the infrastructure are both closer than most people
think. It’s the only feasible long-term solution.
And the more time and resources we waste on stopgap short-circuits like
battery-powered electric cars, the farther we are from achieving those
goals.
Can’t we just get on with it?
If I read this right and let say 50% of people start driving electric cars, this means consumption of electricity will more than double, so more electric plants will have to be built, the taxpayers will have to foot the bill, the electric car owners will have to pay for electricity to charge his batteries which will probably cost him ten time more than it cost him right now to fill his car with regular gasoline at the gas station.....hell man I'm buying myself a bike.
...………….
