2023-07-17 16:37:02
Europe’s transition to electric vehicles and the ban on the sale of gasoline-powered cars from 2035 will wipe out the car industry. The technology is far from perfect, the costs will be enormous, the logistics are difficult, the dependence on China is worrisome, and it is better not to talk about the negative reaction of public opinion. Is it possible to replace all European cars and vans with electric ones? In theory, yes, but in practice there are countless doubts about its feasibility. British journalist Matt Ridley wrote an interesting article about the almost morbid strain of electric cars and the challenges caused by the transition. The article published in the Daily Mail examines the European and British situation from several perspectives. First, he mentions his political side. Most electric car batteries are made in China, and China’s market power is growing, thanks to huge investments in lithium and other minerals, low labor costs and a cheap coal-fired grid. The Chinese company BYD overtook Tesla as the largest electric vehicle manufacturer last year, and in a truly worrying development, it has now agreed with Tesla to jointly support “socialist values” while dominating the market and apparently setting the prices. The transition to electric transport in the short term will inevitably mean buying Chinese. The world’s dependence on China has already reached amazing proportions, we really want to force ourselves to become even more dependent on a totalitarian system that tramples on freedom, commits genocide against the Uighurs, threatens war, and flattens the COVID- 19 epidemics? In order for Europe to be able to break away from China, a battery capacity 100 times greater than the current one would be needed, which is neither affordable nor feasible. In order to lure battery manufacturers to the old continent, despite skyrocketing energy prices, governments would have to give battery and car manufacturers brutal sums of taxpayers’ money. But why would governments give huge sums of money to some of the privileged few, if in the process they cut out the existing European manufacturers? Average people won’t demand electric cars According to Ridley, there’s no sign that average people will demand this transition. Electric cars still cost almost twice as much as petrol cars. So just as manufacturers need taxpayer support to build electric cars, consumers need support to buy them. An industry that depends on taxpayer support at both ends of the chain is simply not sustainable. Nor can Europe’s entire electricity infrastructure be easily and quickly transformed to cope with the extra demand associated with the transition – without additional subsidies. Just providing the surplus power required for an all-electric fleet is an impossible task. It would be feasible by building new nuclear power plants, but their construction and commissioning could take several decades. In addition, many people protest against nuclear energy, but it is not possible to satisfy such a large demand with purely renewable energy. Then there is the problem of charging. Many people live, for example, in condominiums or panel apartments. For them, charging cars is a logistical nightmare. Even those who live in a house with a garden cannot solve fast charging, for example. So governments will either invest even more money in modernizing the network and supporting users, or after 2035 you will have to count on charging times of several hours, compared to today’s five-minute refueling time. Andrew Montford, from Net Zero Watch, claims that modernizing the distribution network is impossible within such a time frame, so electric cars will mean that many people will be forced to give up driving altogether. Ridley seems to be green, he also touched on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, which he thinks is only a wishful dream of politicians, the reality is completely different. First, producing an electric car requires far more carbon dioxide emissions in many extractive industries than a gasoline car. This is especially true for the battery. As Mark Mills, an energy expert at the Manhattan Institute, explained in a recent article, “One pound of crude oil [amelyből a benzint és a dízelüzemanyagot állítják elő] of stored energy requires 15 pounds of lithium batteries, which means excavating about 7,000 pounds of rock and earth to extract the necessary minerals—lithium, graphite, copper, nickel, aluminum, zinc, neodymium, manganese, and more. Thus, about 250 tons of material must be mined and processed to produce a typical half-ton EV battery. This requires a lot of diesel and electricity.” So the electric car has a huge emission disadvantage even before it is even put on the market. Gautam Kalghatgi, a professor of engineering at the University of Oxford, calculated that an electric car with a 60kWh battery would start with an emissions shortfall equivalent to 7.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide before it had traveled a single mile. Even when driving, the electric vehicle is not “zero-emission” because the electricity grids of several countries are powered by gas (which emits some carbon dioxide) and wind turbines (which require a lot of coal to produce and are replaced every 20-30 years). Even nuclear power has carbon dioxide emissions (lots of concrete and steel), albeit at a minimal level. If we take all of this into account, we can calculate how many miles an electric car has to travel in order to “break even” with a gasoline car in terms of emissions. Volkswagen compared a diesel Golf with an electric Golf and estimated that the electric car would need to travel 70,000 kilometers to achieve lower emissions than a diesel car in an average European country. In Germany, where the grid is still partially dependent on coal, it is more like 125,000 kilometers. It would never break even in China, and electric cars could even be called coal cars, since they mostly use coal-fired power plants that emit smoke. Volvo compared its electric car to a petrol equivalent and concluded that break-even mileage in a typical European country is already possible at 50,000 kilometers, although emissions savings are still only 15 percent after 120,000 kilometers. It therefore takes an average car driver 12 years to reach the point where he saves 15 percent of emissions. However, the batteries are designed to last approximately 120,000 kilometers. So by the time the emissions savings become visible, the car is scrapped or the battery needs to be replaced with a huge sum of money – long before we reach the 25 percent emissions savings. Either way, the clock is set back on emissions, and in the next five years emissions will be higher again than if we stuck to gasoline cars. If we changed cars every five years, we would never see any savings. Many people will be able to shop in 2034. It should also not be forgotten that a gasoline or diesel car that has driven around 80,000 kilometers still has value, but an electric car that has driven the same distance is largely avoided by buyers. So existing electric car owners are likely to replace their cars even sooner than petrol or diesel car owners. And if we change something at the same rate as socks, it could be called anything but environmentally friendly. The point would be long-term use, not permanent replacement. However, professionals can tell politicians anything, they do not expand. They stand up for technology almost for ideological reasons and make hasty decisions without consulting industry players. Time passes amazingly quickly, but big plans still exist only on paper. Approaching 2035, either the leaders of the EU will change their minds and take a few steps back, or they can expect that in 2034 many people will buy what will probably be the last petrol car of their lives and use it until it runs out.
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