11 Reasons Why Electric Cars Will Never be the Thing

[Lee Chowaniec]

While the world continues to increase in population, its inhabitants continue to defecate on streets / on land, pollute our waters with plastic / debris /waste, kill off flora and fauna, some believe the planet will be saved by simply eliminating fossil fuels and converting to electrification through solar, wind, and EV’s.

At a time when the world is suffering an energy crisis from sanctions there are those who will do anything to prevent increased oil and gas production that would help offset the energy crisis, inflation, and the prospect of food shortages.

The following report well exemplifies the folly of just pursuing 100% EV production.

11 Reasons Why Electric Cars Will Never be the Thing

https://www.americaoutloud.com/11-re...-the-comments/

When Elon Musk, who makes his fortune from Tesla electric car sales, boosts an increase in American oil and gas production to make up for the loss of Russian imports, you just know President Joe Biden is on the wrong track.

On March 4th, the billionaire CEO of Tesla tweeted:

“Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.”

Musk added eight minutes later:

“Obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil & gas exports.”

And, surprisingly, Musk, the EV pioneer, is now on the side of common sense concerning our transportation energy sources.

Here are 11 reasons electric cars will never be the ‘thing” … and yes, I’m sure you can add to this list in the comments:

1 – $10,000 excess cost over comparable internal combustion engine-driven cars

2 – Insufficient places to recharge

3 – Excess time to recharge versus filling a gas tank—at least six times longer requiring six times as many filling stations as we have today

4 – Availability of excess energy in the nation—we simply do not have the electricity available to support a mass transition to EVs

5 – Low mileage, for most owners it is just a second car

6 – Cold-weather range reduction—EV batteries don’t work well at low temperatures

7 – Used car value—due to the high cost of replacing the battery

8 – Limited density per neighborhood—or the neighborhood grid will overload

9 – Battery cost and life—needing two or three expensive batteries in a car’s lifetime

10 – Parking limitations—Germany has banned EVs from underground parking due to fire risk

11 – Serious environmental and human rights abuses abound across the world due to the way in which EV batteries are made

[mark blazejewski]

11 – Serious environmental and human rights abuses abound across the world due to the way in which EV batteries are made[/I]

The Left in the United States traditionally has prioritized the issue of human rights.

But when it comes to our relationship with China, it has turned a blind eye to China's genocide policy relating to the Uyghurs, and regarding its "Green Agenda," EVs in particular, the Leftees do not seem to be very reactive to this issue:

"Amnesty International says human rights abuses, including the use of child labour, in the extraction of minerals, like cobalt, used to make the batteries that power electric vehicles is undermining ethical claims about the cars."

Reference: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/...tric-vehicles/

Amnesty International challenges the electric vehicle industry to produce batteries free of human rights abuses

On 21 March 2019, Amnesty International launched its ethical batteries campaign, challenging leaders in the electric vehicle industry to produce the world's first completely ethical battery, free of human rights abuses within its supply chain, within five years. The organization highlights that electric vehicle batteries currently rely on key minerals - in particular cobalt and lithium - linked to human rights abuses including child labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo, environmental pollution, ecosystem destruction and indigenous rights violations. The organization also highlights the high carbon footprint of battery manufacturing and the need for responsible battery waste disposal. In this story, learn more from Amnesty International's press release, slide presentation at the Nordic Electric Vehicle Summit and media coverage of the campaign.

Reference: https://www.business-humanrights.org...rights-abuses/

Why is that???

[Lee Chowaniec]

Batteries: An inconvenient truth?

An interesting read on going green.

Batteries, they do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.

Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?"

Einstein's formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.

There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.

Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery's metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.

In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle single-use ones properly.

But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive production costs.

A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust for just - one - battery."

Sixty-eight percent of the world's cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?"

I'd like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being 'green,' but it is not. This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weigh 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades.

There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions.

"Going Green" may sound like the Utopian ideal but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth's environment than meets the eye, for sure.

[yaksplat]

The best battery is a crane and large concrete blocks.

[Lee Chowaniec]

Electrical Vehicle Scam
Drs. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

The utility companies have thus far had little to say about the alarming cost projections to operate electric vehicles (EVs) or the increased rates that they will be required to charge their customers. It is not just the total amount of electricity required, but the transmission lines and fast charging capacity that must be built at existing filling stations. Neither wind nor solar can support any of it. Electric vehicles will never become the mainstream of transportation!

In part 1 of our exposé on the problems with electric vehicles (EVs), we showed that they were too expensive, too unreliable, rely on materials mined in China and other unfriendly countries, and require more electricity than the nation can afford. In this second part, we address other factors that will make any sensible reader avoid EVs like the plague.

EV Charging Insanity

In order to match the 2,000 cars that a typical filling station can service in a busy 12 hours, an EV charging station would require 600, 50-watt chargers at an estimated cost of $24 million and a supply of 30 megawatts of power from the grid. That is enough to power 20,000 homes. No one likely thinks about the fact that it can take 30 minutes to 8 hours to recharge a vehicle between empty or just topping off. What are the drivers doing during that time?

ICSC-Canada board member New Zealand-based consulting engineer Bryan Leyland describes why installing electric car charging stations in a city is impractical:

“If you’ve got cars coming into a petrol station, they would stay for an average of five minutes. If you’ve got cars coming into an electric charging station, they would be at least 30 minutes, possibly an hour, but let’s say its 30 minutes. So that’s six times the surface area to park the cars while they’re being charged. So, multiply every petrol station in a city by six. Where are you going to find the place to put them?”

The government of the United Kingdom is already starting to plan for power shortages caused by the charging of thousands of EVs. Starting in June 2022, the government will restrict the time of day you can charge your EV battery. To do this, they will employ smart meters that are programmed to automatically switch off EV charging in peak times to avoid potential blackouts.

In particular, the latest UK chargers will be pre-set to not function during 9-hours of peak loads, from 8 am to 11 am (3-hours), and 4 pm to 10 pm (6-hours). Unbelievably, the UK technology decides when and if an EV can be charged, and even allows EV batteries to be drained into the UK grid if required. Imagine charging your car all night only to discover in the morning that your battery is flat since the state took the power back. Better keep your gas-powered car as a reliable and immediately available backup! While EV charging will be an attractive source of revenue generation for the government, American citizens will be up in arms.

Used Car Market

The average used EV will need a new battery before an owner can sell it, pricing them well above used internal combustion cars. The average age of an American car on the road is 12 years. A 12-year-old EV will be on its third battery. A Tesla battery typically costs $10,000 so there will not be many 12-year-old EVs on the road. Good luck trying to sell your used green fairy tale electric car!

Tuomas Katainen, an enterprising Finish Tesla owner, had an imaginative solution to the battery replacement problem—he blew up his car! New York City-based Insider magazine reported (December 27, 2021):

“The shop told him the faulty battery needed to be replaced, at a cost of about $22,000. In addition to the hefty fee, the work would need to be authorized by Tesla…Rather than shell out half the cost of a new Tesla to fix an old one, Katainen decided to do something different… The demolition experts from the YouTube channel Pommijätkät (Bomb Dudes) strapped 66 pounds of high explosives to the car and surrounded the area with slow-motion cameras…the 14 hotdog-shaped charges erupt into a blinding ball of fire, sending a massive shockwave rippling out from the car…The videos of the explosion have a combined 5 million views.”

We understand that the standard Tesla warranty does not cover “damage resulting from intentional actions,” like blowing the car up for a YouTube video.

EVs Per Block in Your Neighborhood

A home charging system for a Tesla requires a 75-amp service. The average house is equipped with 100-amp service. On most suburban streets the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla. For half the homes on your block to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly overloaded.

Batteries

Although the modern lithium-ion battery is four times better than the old lead-acid battery, gasoline holds 80 times the energy density. The great lithium battery in your cell phone weighs less than an ounce while the Tesla battery weighs 1,000 pounds. And what do we get for this huge cost and weight? We get a car that is far less convenient and less useful than cars powered by internal combustion engines. Bryan Leyland explained why:

“When the Model T came out, it was a dramatic improvement on the horse and cart. The electric car is a step backward into the equivalence of an ordinary car with a tiny petrol tank that takes half an hour to fill. It offers nothing in the way of convenience or extra facilities.”

Our Conclusion

The electric automobile will always be around in a niche market likely never exceeding 10% of the cars on the road. All automobile manufacturers are investing in their output, and all will be disappointed in their sales. Perhaps they know this and will manufacture just what they know they can sell. This is certainly not what President Biden or California Governor Newsom are planning for. However, for as long as the present government is in power,
they will be pushing the electric car as another means to run our lives. We have a chance to tell them exactly what we think of their expensive and dangerous plans when we go to the polls in November of 2022.


Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years of experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.