Here’s Why Electric Cars Are Useless:TESLA -range, on the flat, just over 200 miles
in summer. In winter lucky to get 100 miles.
To suggest, as some ignorant people have, that electric cars ‘emit no CO2’ is
absurd because the power stations that charge them do. To charge an electric
vehicle (such as a Tesla), just once, requires the burning of 40 kilograms of coal.
A petrol car will require about 20 kilograms of petrol for the same distance. It follows that the electric car is emitting about double the CO2 of a petrol car.
Here are the sums:Drax [ower station uses about 0.31 kilograms of coal per KWh generated.1
A Tesla battery is rated at 70 KWh and fast charging is only 60% efficient.It will need 125 KWh of electricity for a single charge; this works out asabout 40 kilogram (0.31×125) of coal for a full charge [87kg on Greenpeace data].
The cost of electricity for the range available in a Tesla—200 miles in summer; 100 miles in winter—works out at ~ £19. The petrol for 200 miles costsmore but most of that cost is tax (currently about 60%)—about £28. In winter,
for 100 miles, the petrol costs just £15.
During trials, between 1927-30, of British steamlocomotives a typical result was that, for a 500 ton express train, coal was consumed at the rateof 20 kg per mile.2 Over 200 miles therefore 4000 kg was consumed.Scaling down to a twoton car: 4000÷250=16 kg coal. Even allowingfor economiesof scale, compare this to the 40kg required by a Tesla.
Further issues and hazards:
• In the battery manufacture for a Tesla model S, around 17.5 ton of CO2 has
been released. That would take a petrol/diesel car some eight years to produce!3
• Battery cycling—the deterioration of the capacity of a lithium battery with
charging—must be allowed for, costing about £3 per cycle.4
•Fire: even small lithium batteries are liable to catch fire or even explode,releasing deadly toxins such as COS, HF, CO.5 The huge dangers for occupants In tthe event of an accident are obvious. Firehoses would only exacerbate theproblem, causing electrocution of victims.6 [The Emergency Services can’t touch acrashed EV without calling for specialist equipment - recently a Tesla was ashes in 90 seconds!]
1. www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/f/fuelcomparison.htm. Figures from Greenpeace are higher: 0.7
kg/KWh (www.energydesk.greenpeace.org/2013/02/14/much-coal-burning-will-keep-burning/). Not all
electricity is produced from coal of course, but it makes a simple comparator. Wind turbines take around five
years to pay off their CO2 ‘debt’ (concrete, metal mining, refining etc). They seldom last more than ten years.
Their main bearings last less than two years.
2. The British Steam Locomotive 1925-1965 by O.S.Nock, Ian Allan 1966. p67 Dynamometer Car Tests 1927 on
LMSR Engine Royal Scot No. 6100.
3. According to IVL, the Swedish Environment Institute.
4. Battery ‘swopping’ is unviable. An average garage refuels 1000 cars a day; how are they going to recharge
1000 batteries every day @ 5-12 hours each? Also who is going to carry them @>half a ton each?
5. Carbonyl sulphide (similar in action to cyanide gas), hydrogen fluroride, carbon monoxide.
6. This happens: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44511200 ‘Tesla spontaneously bursts into flames’
LMSR Royal Scot 6100 in 1927
• The Tesla battery alone weighs 800kg—that’s nearly a ton—equivalent to ten
passengers (an average petrol engine + fuel weighs about 140kg).7
• Every servicing garage will be compelled to buy a completely new suite of
tools, lifts, ramps etc. under electrical safety regulations for EVs.
•
Death from exposure. In winter, travelling, say, over the Yorkshire moors in a blizzard at night, you are likely to die. The car ‘dies’, as battery power drops due to the cold. There is now no heating. You freeze inside, you freeze outsidetrying to find help.
Petrol and diesel cars do not have this problem.8
• As most of the numpties, who think electric cars are viable, live in towns the
above point doubtless passes them by, but the huge potential for traffic
clogging due to ‘dead’ electric vehicles has not been considered9, nor has the
issue of time to recharge.
Currently an average petrol car takes about five minutes to fill up with petrol, pay and depart. If an electric car takes a minimum of 75 minutes to recharge (five hours is more likely), either the queues are going to be astronomical10 and the time wasted ditto (see also note4.) or there will need to be nearly five million charge points installed at an estimated roll out cost of £20 billion.
The BBC took an electric car from London to Edinburgh. It took threedays, slower than a stagecoach. People sometimes need to get to places quickly!
7. Roadside tyre change is impossible without a hydraulic lift for the whole vehicle.
8. Further, any ‘off-road’ EV would fry its battery and motors (or blow a fuse) if stuck in difficult terrain.
9. One type of electric car is called a Leaf. This will give a wholly new meaning to ‘leaves on the road/line’!
10. as happened in California in 2019: a two mile queue for 40 super chargers.
Mass per unit energy for batteries v. fossil fuels:Summer 40:1Winter 80:1
In case anyone thinks that there is a miracle battery just over the horizon.....I can absolutely assure him or her that there is no battery technology that is mature11,To quote Mr David Hume, “Miracles do not happen.” (at least in technology).
No law was ever required to ban horses and replace them with cars; so why do we have to ban petrol vehicles if EVs are really so wonderfu? Oh, don’t forget that you’ll need to pay to have it taken away when you buy a new one.
Just where is all this power to come from anyway? The Climate Change Act now requires that by 2030 all gas heating be replacedby electric heating and all new cars be electric. Besides the stupidity of turning
huge amounts of electricity back into heat, clearly no one in government has done the maths. The results are horrendous!
Drax power station in Yorkshire 4 gigaWatt = 4,000,000 kiloWatt22 million gas using households (to replace gas boiler)12 @ 30kW 660,000,000kW
31 million standard13 chargers for electric cars @ 8kW 248,000,000kW
908,000,000kW All needed at peak from 5pm when people come home, plug in the car, turn on heating,
turn on the oven and take a shower.This will require: 908,000,000kW ÷ 4,000,000 (1 Drax) ® 227 extra ‘Drax’ power stations.
Were these to be run on biomass (wood chips)—as 50% of Drax already is—this would
consume, annually, the entire timber harvest of the USA!Plus—we will need to dig up every street to lay much bigger cables.Estimated cost: between £200 billion and £1 trillion.
11. There is even now a global shortage of Lithium and Cobalt; also of Neodymium for the motor magnets.
12. Heat pumps would be totally impractical for most of the UK’s housing stock . But if used - they rate @
10kW and cost £15,000 - would reduce the number of new ‘Drax’ sized power stations required to 117.
13. The 75 minute Tesla super charger requires industrial 400v 3-phase supply (unavailable to domestic homes).
31 million such super chargers would require an additional 770 Drax power stations.
Electric HGVs anyone?Battery alone would weigh 30 tons for just 200 miles
I am grateful to Chris Skerry (a Tesla owner) for some of the data for the Tesla.
Compiled by Philip Foster MA (Nat. Sci.) 1 Barnfield, Hemingford Abbots, Huntingdon PE28 9AX
philip.foster17@ntlworld.com
He is the author of While the Earth Endures: Creation, Cosmology and Climate Change
Available on Amazon UK or order direct; contact details above.
