And of course most of the dirt about petrol is out in the open and isn't secret at all. Little things like poisons being released into the air from every tailpipe and smokestack and wars over scarce fossil fuel resources and fracking that threatens pure drinking water aquifers, also potentially increases earthquake activity.
Indeed, thanks for raising this Kent. I first discovered this thanks to Robert Llewwellyn, here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BQpX-9OyEr4.html (or search "Volts for Oil | Fully Charged").
Oil is the most precious commodity today. This video was partially funded by the oil industry, as every major news network is, and every major publication. It's hard to get the truth because no one wants to hurt their advertisers or investors. But there's no turning back anymore. I wish the US would step up and ban gas cars (at least California) in the near future.
Gris Anik in your fantasy world I will fly on a unicorn. Once the Saudis run out of money and the rich ones leave for London what happens to everyone else? Syria is what happens. When you can't buy water the middle east turns back to desert and 700 million people start looking for somewhere to move too.
Even though Norway's transition to electric has mainly been financed by dirty oil, at least the money is being put to good use to get the transition to renewable energy going. By the time the world is truly free of fossil fuels, Norway will have completely made the transition to electric, even though dirty money was used for it. The way I see it, it is an ok-ish compromise, when the end goal is to end dependency on stale dinosaur piss.
It's great that oil money in Norway can be used for investing in a clean future. Regarding abortion of fetuses with genetic disabilities... You wouldn't want to give birth to what would have to suffer it's entire life for a disability. It's more morally sound to give birth to healthy children.
@TheEconomist Thanks for a good summary of the current Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) situation. However, pointing to the electricity supply, you gave the incorrect impression that BEV's are just as polluting as their Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) ancestors, scientific research shows that not to be true. Unlike an ICE vehicle which gets more polluting with age a BEV will get greener as utility electricity is moving to the cheapest provision on the market - renewables, chiefly solar, but also wind generation and battery storage.
Yoann Le Petit, clean Vehicles and emobility officer at T&E, said: “Today an electric vehicle driving on Polish electricity - the most carbon intensive in the EU - still has a lower impact on the climate than a new diesel car. With the rapid decarbonisation of the EU electricity mix, on average electric vehicles will emit half the CO2 emissions of a diesel car by 2030 including the manufacturing emissions.”
Cobalt mining is destroying rain forest in DRC. Under 5% of Lithium based batteries are recycled unlike easy to recycle Lead Acid. Mist are incinerated despite the EV propoganda where a few manufacturers use used units provide battery back up power. Bigger, heavier cars = more energy consumption. This negated the efficiency benefits of diesel with rise of SUV supersize me consumer culture. EVs going the same way. More road contact, more PMs.
Stop this nonsense about electric cars polluting as much as an ICE engines, simple laws of thermodynamics tell you otherwise Most cars struggle to have a thermal efficiency of 25%, whereas a coal plants have about 35% Even if all electricity came from coal plants, which it doesn't, electric cars would still be less pollutant Not to mention affordable solar power is coming at giant leaps
Peter Húbek No they most certainly do not, but if you believe that feel free to gather the information from your sources and share with the rest of us. Thanks.
www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a12443313/mercedes-amgs-f1-engine-is-amazingly-efficient/ www.reuters.com/article/us-autoshow-tokyo-mazda/with-new-technology-mazda-gives-spark-to-gasoline-engine-idUSKBN1CT368 Do you need more ? The ICE technology is evolving also. The biggest problem with EVs that i see is the charging infrastructure not the range , you wouldn't be able to charge them in densely populated places, imagine when there'll be milion EVs, the existing power plants are not build to handle this. And don't tell me that you won't own the vehicle and bla bla, this doesn't make sense, because then we're talking about whole new kind of the transportation which will be build in parallel, with just a few models of cars, and i don't think that brands like audi, bmw will be ok to loose their businesses. I'd like to see more EVs in the cities, where there are appropriate. For the rest, the hybrid cars are the answer. Look www.koenigsegg.com/regera/ on koenigsegg regera. You can drive only on batteries and start the ICE only when you need it. This is the best of both worlds. Maybe when there will be new kind of energy sources, batteries the EVs will substitute ICEs powered vehicles. But with the existing technologies, it won't be that soon.
Peter Hubek, you say a lot of nonsense Modern ICE's do not have almost 50% efficiency, that's a lie. The F1 mercedes engine value was achieved on dyno only, and well, it's an F1 engine, it doesn't apply to real world The Mazda Skyactiv-X engine, as good as it might be, hopes at best to be in the same level as Diesel engines Also, EV's can even help power plants regulate their output more efficiently, recharging when theres a surplus of energy, and refeeding the grid when there's need for it. This would not only allow the power plants to become more efficient, but also save billions But I guess this are just things that don't matter to an "Alternate Facts" type of person
mikeboy0001 you are blind, as 99% of the people here. Please do your homework. Do you have an idea how much power do you need to charge one car ? I live in central Europe, based on report from 2016 there are 3 000 000 cars in my country. We have one atomic power plant, many water and coal plants and we still need to buy electricity from other countries because it's not enough. So my question is ? Are you an idiot that's not able to count 1+1 as majority of people here blinded by a viral marketing supported by governments ? I'm not advocate ice cars but currently there aren't any valiable options right now. Usage of Evs will help in some places but they're not a cure. And I've said near 50% !!!! So as you can see the technology is evolving. As I said, for now the hybrid is the way to go. I think that's the reason why brands like audi, bmw, Mercedes are so restrained.
No mention of the fact that China is building record breaking amounts of solar panels year after year so their electricity is cleaner and cleaner every year. Way to give the full context Economist. .:.:.
If you want context, China is still highly dependent on dirty energy like coal. They've also recently built several dams along Mekong River that threatens both the ecology and economy of other countries downstream. Don't expect 5-minute explainer videos to be a full docu.
Even though this piece rightfully points out that the transition to electric is happening faster than people may realize, it makes some ‘strange’ mistakes. China is mostly using LiFePO4 batteries, not LiCo2. Next gen batteries could be sodium based, not even lithium. Talking about Cobalt as if it’s a new energy source, akin to ‘the new petrol’, is misleading. This piece also fails to mention that coal is being decommissioned globally in favor of renewables. The cheapest after hydro is wind, followed by solar. Neither coal and certainly not nuclear, will be able to compete.
An electric car have always a very strong acceleration. Because straight form the start at rpm zero you have already full power without clutch and without changing gears. An internal combustion engine don't have power with low rpm and you need to reach the powerfull rpm range first. That makes it way slower. But you can not always drive that high acceleration, because you will consume a lot of tires...
The battery is an upgrade-able technology. Petrol and diesel is stuck at the same level of energy-density for the long time. *Electricity will win this game.*
jizon mi It doesn't have to be. The grid can handle things as it is modernized since most charging takes place at night when demand traditionally has been low. EVs are cleaner even when powered by dirty power plants, this has been demonstrated over and over. Count the emissions produced by internal combustion vehicles from the wellhead to the combustion chamber. Transport, refining, and distribution of oil and gasoline use energy before the end product goes into your tank. Refineries alone use 4.5 kw. Of electricity to produce a gallon of gas. This opinion is coming from the present business model of gasoline production with government subsidy being a given and not even mentioned. When the public sees the financial benefits of EV economics, that alone will sell them. Where I live if you commute fourty miles a day and use an EV the fuel and maintenance savings will make your car payments.
True and also bullshit , petrol has the same energy density but the engine using it is not even close to being even 40% efficient . Electric cars are 80% plus efficient If petrol based cars had the same level of efficiency the range and mpg would more than double . Let's look at the prius which gets around 50mpg , if we upgrade that to the new efficiency standard and at 100 mpg and a $2 per gallon gas price it cost just 2 cent per mile. If we look at tesla's price per mile using 12 cent per kwh electric cost it cost 5 cent per mile . Making the claim petrol driven cars are not able to be upgraded just like battery technology is beyond stupid .The first cars ever made were in fact electric they were replaced by gas engines because gas was cheaper and gave longer travel distances with ever increasing technology . This technology boom has not stopped since, a late addition would be mazda's new skyactiv x technology which does 40 mpg without even using hybrid technology !!! Electric car batteries would have to just about double in density and lower their cost to be a real gas engine killer , even then a new boost in technology could send them packing again .
In urban environments, you can get your power off local solar panels. However, I think the efficiency problem will be solved as self driving cars become accepted. The electric cars tend to use 135wh per km, which is quite high, but there is no reason this has to be. There's been a drift towards heavy cars, as people try to fend off death, using an SUV. We are driving sleek fast HEAVY expensive show ponies quite fast, because we are impatient. Robot drivers have patience and can drive at slower paced speeds without traffic lights and traffic jams to manage the traffic. What will finally kill the old style car, is human drivers unable to comply with traffic regulations. (Like when Will Smith puts his car into manual in I Robot movie.) We will be struggling to say why we need windows in a car, because all the light coming in, because we don't want people looking at what we do, when a robot drives us. By that time we will use 3D goggles, so we won't mind light falling on our tablet screen. Lithium battery range will be extended with slow burning fuel cells. Maybe ethanol, because oil is too messy to run through a catalyst.
Electric cars are all over Shanghai. Electric automobiles are the main vehicles on our campus next to sharebikes at .15 cents an hour. Shanghai is winning!
Dirty little secret? This story fails to mention that a grid powered by dirty power sources is still more efficient than having a combustion engine in every car. It's a little of the "best being the enemy of the good."
Devyyon - gas won't last forever, might as well switch soon. Elec is superior, more interior space because mechanicals take up less space, and more torque (fun).
Yeah obviously we also need to clean up our electric generation. HOWEVER, even if all was made by burning coal the electric car would be cleaner CO2 wise because it is so much more efficient. As for cobalt and the Congo; Saudi Arabia was a poor and belligerent country when oil was discovered there. One might instead say that cobalt will enable central Africa to build a society of some wealth. Otherwise the video is right; if not next year then certainly pretty soon the electric car is coming and I say, "thank goodness for that!"
yet another article blaming electric car for dirty grid. Like until now we had clean grid???? lets blame A/C and electric heaters as well! sooner we all shift to EVs, the better. Smart and clean grid will follow. And don't forget, it takes electricity to refine oil.
Good article...until he comes to the point about coal fire electricity source. He certainly did not do his homework re that statement. See qz.com/1107403/the-world-is-abandoning-coal-fired-electricity-at-an-astonishing-pace/ Makes one think he may be a shill for the oil companies. We will change ,we have to change. Even China will abandon coal in favor of cleaner energy.
Imagine a world were every country can power itself. Everywhere has wind and solar to some extent raining down on them. How great would it be if countries could get the power already there instead of shipping liquids to burn from around the planet.
Nathan Schmick oil free countries just think know wars for oil all the lives that will be saved know one crippled by war maybe the world would spend more time working on infrastructure for country's
I think we will start to see a noticeable shift around 2019 / 2020 because that's when several major car companies will release mass market electric vehicles, people outside the US will have received their Tesla Model 3 and at that point most countries will (hopefully) have built a somewhat sufficient charging infrastructure.
Not all lithium ion batteries require cobalt. There are a number of lithium ion battery chemistries, the two major options of which, lithium-manganese, and lithium-iron phosphate, do not need cobalt.
The first Nissan Leaf used cobalt-free lithium-manganese batteries (24 kWh). But the new ones (30 kWh, 40 kWh) switched to lithium-cobalt because of the better energy density and therefore higher range per weight. Today, high range means lithium-cobalt. But this will change some day, maybe within a few years.
Also new Carbon only batteries are being developed along with Zinc Bromide batteries, it is only a matter of time now, Oil will always have a small market, jet fuel will be required for some time yet and plastics and other essential chemicals need oil, but it makes much more sense to keep the stuff for when it is needed than just burn it up in polluting cars.
It doesn't seem that long ago when hardly anyone had the faintest clue of just how rapidly the transition from vinyl LPs to CDs would be, even when taking into account the phenomenal price of early CD players, which then started to reduce rapidly as their popularity increased. Similarly the almost overnight change from CRT TVs to large flat screen LEDs. So my own guess would be that it will be a similar scenario with electric vehicles, especially when the tipping point of mass production and plummeting prices really start to kick in.
A rather pessimistic view on electric cars and the future production of electricity. But I suppose the sceptics need to yell loudly to keep us from being interested in offers like the longer range Hyundai IONIQ EV, the Audi Quattro e-tron, the Jaguar I-Pace(launching with its own race series) and other great cars coming in late 2018, as well as the other great offers coming before 2020. The investment in a greener electricity production will not just happen because of electric cars, but also because most countries need green investments to reach the goals set forward in The Paris Agreement. Cobalt is NOT necessary in the production of lithium batteries, there are several other anodes and more on the way. Anodes like manganese and iron phosphate is already in use and others like silicon-composite anodes are almost ready to take over. One of the most promising silicon-composites is from the waters near Norway and as such not in a conflict area.
New power generation plants are being built across the world all the time, both to replace aging infrastructure and to increase capacity across the globe. Today around half of all the new generating facilities are either solar or wind powered and that figure is increasing because they are now cheaper than other technologies. Coal is being gradually phased out, and both oil and gas powered generation will follow. New coal plants are not being built in Europe or the USA and China has many coal plants that will not be commissioned. The switch to non-fossil fuel based electricity is growing exponentially - solar has been increasing at more than 30% per year for 30 years (from a very small base) and this trend is continuing. Within 10 years we can expect renewables will completely dominate the power generation market. This means that electric cars will be consuming clean energy. The intermittent nature of solar and wind generation will be overcome by storing the energy in batteries - in many cases the very same batteries that are being put into the new electric cars - these will provide a proportion of the required grid connected storage. Regarding Lithium it is a very abundant element in the earth's crust and it will not run out. Cobalt may be problematic, however the advent of Lithium Sulphur batteries and other technologies will likely resolve the need for Cobalt. Anyone who takes the time to understand the vast scale of change taking place in the energy world today can't help see which way the future lies, whether we agree this is right or not. Personally, I think that electric vehicles will provide a huge benefit to the world compared to the current fossil fuel based energy supply and consumption. At the local level the negative impacts of noise, particulates from exhausts will disappear and also, surprisingly, there will be a massive reduction in dust from vehicle brakes - the ability of electric vehicles to recharge the batteries during braking massively reduces the requirement for wearing away the mechanical brakes. Electric vehicles will make life very much more pleasant and healthy for everyone - even those who are currently convinced that petrol is best.
Your poste is wonderful. You seem to be very well informed about the age of decarbonisation. I am glad there are people like you who are not mislead by biased media.
Two things. Tesla/Solar city are moving towards purely solar power. And they're switching or have switched to getting cobalt from America, instead of Africa.
Solid state batteries will be the next big battery revolution, especially ones that use sodium as the main element. And if solar can continue to drop in price per kW produced, then that is even better news.
NO electric hasn't come of age - it is way past due - imagine if engineering has been pursed for electric as it has been for gas/diesel decades ago....
First Porcsche? Electric! EVs have been around longer than ICE - just much slower development and still behind for convenience, range and affordablity.
I don't know where this is coming from. Comparing coal to cobalt. Come on. Coal is not recoverable. Cobalt is. So when your lithium battery is on life support, the pack can be almost totally recycled. And I don't know where you live but my grid is 48% renewable wind, hydro, and solar. Nationally in the US it's about 20%. Natural gas is more and more of the energy pie compared to coal.
Listen carefully to what the various automakers are saying. There's a big difference between an electric auto and an electrified auto. When they say they are electrifying, it can mean as little as building a 48 volt mild hybrid.
3:46 "But EVs are still running on coal!" It is amazing how this argument is circled over and over in the arguments, disregarding that EVs running on coal are still 2.5 times more efficient than ICE cars. And also disregarding that fossil fuel don't just come into existence at the gas station but that pumping raw oil, transport, storage, refining fossil fuels and delivering it to the gas station costs energy aswell, the same dirty coal energy allegedly all EVs are using. Also disregarding that local emissions are shifted to big power plants which are efficient than a million ICE engines, disregarding that local emissions have a more direct effect on people that power plants which emissions can be controlled more efficiently. Disregarding that renewable energy doesn't have to change in an instant but can gradually become cleaner. But hey, you got to say some bullshit arguments that have been exposed and discussed to death to make a report edgy, right?!
The cons to electric vehicle listed in the video: A. middle east stability, B. dirty sources of electricity, C. blood cobalt. It strikes me that A. Lower oil price due to reduction in demand created by electric car uptake is a threat to middle east stability as being an unintended outcome to be avoided is difficult to defend - 1st has the middle east ever been stable? even in times of relatively stability what kind of stability is it? As I see it, what stability there has ever been has been authoritarian and supported by oppressive security apparatus or theocratic and supported by oppressive security apparatus often financed by ... anyone? ... anyone? Oil. Better to encourage good governance... ie no trade/high tariffs until country implements verifiable good governance. B the grid is cleaning up due to ever lower prices offered by renewables especially wind and solar. Yes burning coal is dirty, but this is a grid issue. Clean up the grid asap yes, stop burning oil for transport yes, these are separate issues C. a tough nut to crack, but realize that violence around anything that is a ready source of cash in the congo is a symptom of poor governance (see transparency international index again these are separate issues solution to bad governance is good governance, do not treat the symptom, etc., ...) more importantly who know what the future will bring, the next generation of batteries will likely be powered by a whole other set of minerals. See Sakti3 and their tech... there are dozens out there all with good technology all better than current Li Ion batteries.
I don't think the point of the video is to argue against EVs with those points, its just to say these are potential issues we will have to resolve as we move towards EVs.
The middle east has been unstable BECAUSE of oil money. And also very expensive for the U.S. in terms of the cost for all the wars we've fought over our oil supply over the years. While it might be true to say that the loss of oil revenue also causes instability, I don't think anyone can make the statement that one is worse than the other. The area is unstable, period. The real question is whether whether western powers should disconnect from the middle-east or not. Eventually oil will no longer be an economic necessity for us (that is, eventually what we produce domestically will be sufficient and our import needs will diminish to a footnote). At that point the question becomes... do we disconnect from the M.E. or don't we? Honestly, I'm all for disconnecting. Our nation-building efforts over the last 100 years have been a dismal failure. -Matt
Thanks Paul. I disagree that these issues are to be laid at the feet of EVs so to speak. Not that they are not problems. Only that they are problems that are independent of EVs. The grid has some dirty bits? Congo is a mess? Middles East stability? Each of these issues are symptoms of larger problems. Taking EVs off the table congo is still a mess, the middles east is another type of mess, and the grid still needs to be cleaned up.
C has already been solved by most of the big lithium-ion battery makers LG Chem, NEC, Samsung, Hitachi and Nissan/AESC. The solution is the Lithium Manganese Oxide battery. The resulting battery is the one that, among other things, have powered the more than 250,000 Nissan LEAFs that have left Nissans factories since 2010. The capacity of the battery is lower than the batteries using cobalt, but not enough to make them unusable in EVs. A future development is using silicone to replace cobalt in lithium batteries, which might double the capacity.
Am hoping the REP. Of CONGO will BENEFIT from this revolution and get out of poverty as much as possible and start developing. There's so much POTENTIAL for Africa to experience growth as much as India or Arabian countries have. Would be a crime if All the rich countries took away all their minerals and barely gave anything back to this poor region.... (Which has been tradition for centuries unfortunately.... Basically Stealing their natural wealth like Gold, Diamonds, and other important minerals/metals). Rich countries benefiting should make it their duty to start donating towards their education, health, water and energy infrastructure. Developing countries have the POTENTIAL to begin their development in a more sustainable and environmental friendly way. Not follow same mistakes others have.
Ugh i hate the point that electric cars run off of a fossil fule power grid. Charging a battery still uses less fossil fuels than sticking it directly in your cars tank. And there is a simple solution. Put solar panels on your roof and sell the extra energy produced to the grid. It will pay itself off in 3 years and after that it will start paying your electric car off. You're getting paid for free energy and having a fancy car.
Luke W WTF no one uses a Gasoline Generator to charge a BEV. That is massively stupid. Natural Gas Turbine MegaWatt generators charging a Nissan Leaf would be closer to 60mpge. Simply because how scale & alkane fuel type is soo much more efficient. Luke W you have written multiple idiotic ignorant comments here.
I was with you until 4:06. Tesla model 3 is 126 MPGe, that's much less pollution even via coal or gas plants compared to an ICE, let alone if you have any renewable or hydro in the mix (incidentally both today are among the cheapest sources of electricity in new projects you can find around the world.) It's not about choosing between gasoline engines and "fully clean," it's does it reduces harm? For the EVs of today and tomorrow, the answer is clearly yes, and in some cases by a lot.
Obs you have to include not using recycled aluminium, using 50% of ALL cobalt from mining in rainforests of DRC, scrappage energy costs of efficient ice cars (not just the ugly obese SUVs, I still get 100mpg real world after almost 17 years driving an aluminium audi a2 1/4 million miles on same drivetrain. It can run on #hvo made from waste.
What they dont mention is that solar panels are also massively growing, so both problems are going to be solved gradually and simultaneously. Also they present the increase on the demand of cobalt as something that would hurt Congo, while the reality is quite the opposite, it will help its industry to grow
It's not them that are going to get out of poverty but a bunch of warlords who are going to use the money to finance their power-grabs or corrupt government officials using it to finance their climb to power. The issue really is that we are going to put money into the hands of bad people because we don't want to get involved.
They seem to dismiss the fact that grids worldwide are getting cleaner all the time and that batteries can be recycled aleviating some of the cobalt needs going forward.
Why are you still saying coal produces electricity it doesn't in Germany , France and the U.K.!! In fact the UK. ALONE RAN ON RENEWABLES AGAIN THIS SUMMER FOR 7 days and renewables produced more gigawatts this summer than any other power sources
France doesn't need coal because it has so much nuclear power, which it apparently isn't frightened of because it isn't American technology from the 1960s (unlike Fukushima.) Germany actually does use a bunch of electricity produced by burning coal -- but it isn't produced in Germany so it's on Poland's balance sheet. :( Germany deserves a lot of credit (e.g. they invented the feed-in tariff we now use in Ontario for instance) for building renewables but they have undone some progress by shutting down nuclear power plants since 2011. Worldwide the deaths eventually produced by fear of nuclear (i.e. sea level rise/anomalous weather/drought/wild fires) is probably greater than the number of people killed in all nuclear power failures. Of course they aren't the same people. :( And I'll just ignore everyone the coal industry has ever killed in mines and surface operations because (no good reasons, just because nuclear is scary and dying in coal mines is familiar.) It seems to me the only responsible thing to do is push for even more spending on renewable and the storage and transmission infrastructure to support it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out
Trus but li-ion batteries with cobalt have higher specific energy content and better performance. Tesla batteries include Cobalt, batteries in Chinese cars generally do not. Cobalt is not a rare metal and is available in many countries but cheapest source is DRC which has ethical issues about use of child labor etc.
Every Tesla today uses Cobalt! 50% from DRC #drccobaltkids www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/child-labour-behind-smart-phone-and-electric-car-batteries/
There should be a United Nations effort to make sure the Congo doesn't further become the victim of the usual pattern of becoming an oligarchy for the benefit of an outside power. The documentary The War On Democracy is a good source of information on how this has been happening.
Why is it most people seem to assume that refined gasoline magically appears at the corner gas station? I’ve heard many say (including this video) that electric cars run on coal - well guess what, so do gas cars! It takes 6 to 8 kilowatt-hours of electricity to refine crude oil into one gallon of gasoline - and this does not include the energy needed to dig the well, pump the crude out of the ground, transport it to a refinery, or haul the finished gas to the local station. Electric cars produce no tailpipe emissions and the Defiant Electric Roadster goes about 50 miles on electricity needed just to make one gallon of gas. The average car gets 25 MPG and produces 8,887 grams (almost 20 pounds) of CO2 for each gallon burned. This means to go the same 50 miles the average car produces close to 40 pounds of CO2 - regardless of how the electricity is produced.
NO ,, Electric Vehicles wont come of age in your life time..! EV's have been around for more than a Century and they have ONLY become popular with the " politics towards renewable energy " - despite advances in Batteries & Magnets..... Currently , EV's represent less than 1% of Cars on US roads and "it will be a very long time" to even reach just 10%. As a matter of fact ; Commercially, it will be more market worthy for Car Makers to change to another FUEL that is less polluting such as Hydrogen ( once the Safety issues are resolved ) because the driving experience will be similar as with fossil fueled Cars ( internal combustion ) - to maintain an acceptable distance / range and quick to refuel... Electric Vehicles represent a compromise in many ways : what if you wanted to go on vacation towing a decent boat interstate , to remote locations, where there is no "plug in power"..? What if you were travelling into Snow regions in the dead of Winter; "where is the energy for heating..? Remember that any Car Air Conditioning - Cooling shortens the range of an Electric Vehicle that already requires " too many hours to recharge ", instead of a few minutes to refuel at a pump. Electric Vehicles have the very worse "resale value" obviously because ; the old batteries perform worse and need to be replaced at half the cost of a new car. Secondhand EV's are a financial risk and compared with a S/H: petrol/ gas/ diesel cars , fossil fueled - wins in practical terms.......... The worst propaganda FRAUD involves Commercial EV's for use in "long distance"..!!!!! Engineers have found that current technology, cannot run heavy trucks due to Battery Weight "taking away from Freight load" ; making EV's non viable. Then we have dreamers that think Electric Efficiency relates to the Motor - wrong, the batteries hold only a percentage of the original energy to charge them, in the first place - the energy loss "already exists" before the EV even moves..! Other dreamers think that it comes from renewables ;; that's fiction. Every Country has base load power that is either connected to another Grid or is backed up with Fossil Fueled or Nuclear Generation. Battery storage is by far the most inefficient & expensive form of retrieving Energy - such as from intermittent Solar & Wind ; not price competitive.
@MH Sorry you have never experienced the superior dynamics of driving an electric vehicle, or the convenience of having a full battery every morning and never having to fill up at a gas station again. Take a ride in a Tesla some time and come back to tell us how much you miss the noise and delay as an ICE car downshifts before delivering a 10MPG burst of acceleration. While you have some valid points regarding grid stability and cost, all of those point begin to diminish in importance as battery costs go below $100/kWH. That is the tipping point where EV's get cheaper than ICE's. See this excellent video debunking a lot of these obsolete EV myths: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kk7ZTn9g7bY.html
The stop making electricity with dirty fuels such as coal, oil & petrochemicals : use solar + wind and energy storage & hydro with pumped storage & wave + fusion of hydrogen : the dirty secret of electric cars is a moot point. Charging the EV can be done with electricity from any kind of generation capacity. That means to make EV's clean, we need more clean grid power, rooftop solar systems, home vertical wind turbine generators and other forms of waste energy recovery like heat from flu chimney exhaust gases, waste heat from data centers with distributed blade racks in homes as a heat source and other creative thermodynamic engineering like MLI or multi-layer building insulation tech applied to homes and businesses, institutions and schools, buildings of all kind benefiting from low profile easy to retrofit MLI insulation typically used in space stations :) but on the cheap using renewable materials or recyclable materials! Your hyperbolic statements about EV being dirty greatly ignores the obvious toxic problems with congested traffic corridors : carbon monoxide + break & tire dust, leaking oils from transmissions and engines with bad seals, fuel vapors from leaky fuel systems + gums and tars in the asphalt off gassing. Gasoline combustion is so dirty that exotic complex rare expensive metal catalysts and complex gas recirculation + vacuum intake blah ... diesel gate : there is no really clean way to burn goo. Imagine if your phone had an exhaust pipe!
Producers forgot Autonomous Electric Vehicles. In 10 - 15 years most people won't need their own car as they'll be able to get an Uber/Lyft/Whatever at a fraction of the cost of owning a vehicle. And, the way renewable energy & battery prices are falling, there will be no need for coal, gas or nuclear electricity generation.
We've had these self driven electric powered vehicles for decades now. They are extremely efficient, in fact several times more efficient than whatever electric cars can be in 2040. They're called trains. You're cutting down the forest and building a garden.
The fact that The energy density of currently available batteries is nowhere near that of petrol (gasoline) is a non factor, also whats the point holding all that energy when only around 30% is used for motion, with electric cars doing over 200 - 300 miles on one charge the battery problem has been solved and will only get better, The ice engine has had a good run, but its now hitting its last legs, with more and more people installing solar on there homes, its only going to make sense that those people get an electric car, solar power is expected to half in 10 years and ATM its dam cheap, you can pickup 8.5kwh of pannels for less than 6k oO will the ICE car die completely, most likely not for at lest 30 - 40 more years but they will fade away, and just become a thing of the past, much like the steam engine has today
John Burrow the market chose electric, that’s what happened. Hydrogen is great but it’s extremely expensive at the moment and who knows how long it would take for hydrogen to come down in price. Electricity is just readily available and progress is already being made towards renewable electricity so it’s just more practical and easier to go in that direction. Hydrogen production isn’t clean either just like battery production isn’t clean
Hydrogen is dead. In the best case scenario it is 2x less efficient than battery-electric vehicles... it can't be made more efficient... and technically those are not Hydrogen fuel cell cars, but Hybrids, as they also need a quite large battery pack to store/stabilize the energy coming from the fuel cell.
Hydrogen is still electric, since it basically feeds a fuel cell. But there are lots of problems with hydrogen, not the least of which being the need for fueling stations similar to the gas stations we have today. The hydrogen cycle is also very inefficient. By the time you get it to the wheels of the vehicle, a lot of the energy has been lost, whereas battery and electric motor technologies are around 90% energy efficient... thus depending only on the efficiency of the electricity produced by the grid (which will only get better as renewables are added to the mix). But the bigger problem for hydrogen is that batteries are further along the engineering curve and even if hydrogen fuel cell technology is able to improve significantly over time, it will still be chasing battery technologies that are improving even faster for many years to come. That's a death sentence for Hydrogen-based vehicles.
0.0889 grams / litre. There are many awesome alternative Fuel Cell types. But Hydrogen H2 is factually IDIOTIC for human activity energy storage. I prefer Alkane Fuel Cells like SOEC SOFC.
I don't buy the whole you still need electricity, so coal and oil are still going to pollute, argument. Electricity is already polluting, and having gas cars only makes that WORSE. If you take away the gas cars then you're only left with regular coal and oil related pollution. Which by the way, coal has become a lot cleaner over the years. Also, they neglect that charging stations will be able to use solar power. Solar power won't get the job done itself, but it will lower the demand placed upon the oil and coal industries. Overall, you get much, MUCH less pollution. Also wind and water can also be sources of electricity. There are clean ways to charge. Not to mention, as batteries get better, people will need to charge less and less.
I suppose I can't prove it but I'd imagine transporting,refining, and retransporting petroleum has got to be more polluting then natural gas which is increasingly the main fossil fuel for electricity generation. I mean its still not ideal but its a stepping stone to full renewables.
Well aren't you a good Moderate. Why have the perfect solution when the still horribly polluting halfway solution is right there and can make the oil companies so much more money?
Drilling for gas in ME, compressing it, shipping to EU, burning it or fracking hardly better than fossil liquid fuels. Add in grid losses, EVSE losses, PEU losses, battery losses and that explains why an i3 is no better than an old Audi A2 in efficiency terms. www.autointell.com/News-2001/May-2001/May-2001-4/May-23-01-p8.htm
Solar will soon kill oil, gas and coal 100% completely, because it will be cheaper, and no one can stop it, not even fossil fuel PR flaks. In 25-50 years it will be cheaper to synthesize gasoline from thin air than to pump it out of the ground. But no one will want it anymore anyway. Diversify while you still can.
IncognitoTorpedo yea don’t you love how they failed to mention that a lot of countries are converting to solar and wind energy. And how solar panels are getting cheaper and cheaper every year. Nope they just talked about electric cars being powered by coal. Which even then is still more clean than a ICE car that will always be dirty, while electric cars get cleaner with time as countries convert to renewable energy sources.
In the UK, we have a choice of buying our electricity from renewable-only providers, and most car charging is done at home... I think, for the early adopters at least who are partly motivated to buy electric cars by green motivation, they will be charging the cars from renewable tariffs... Not sure the case for other countries, or what the buyer profile will be when electric cars outperform petrol cars on every metric, at which point buying a petrol/diesel car will be like buying a steam car in the 1920s... Why would you?
It takes approx 4.5kw alone to manufacture 1gal/3.7l of gasoline. 4.5kw will get your electric car about 30km alone already. So, instead of spending 4.5kw of electricity to manufactured a fossil fuel into gasoline to then propel a car an electric will comparatively gain an addition 30km right off the top.
Tesla Model 3 was designed to run 1.000.000 miles with oil changes every 50.000 miles. No transmission, less wear on the brakes ... and you can expect to have more than 80% battery capacity remaining after 25 years, if you follow the manufacturer's recommendations (just like you have to follow certain rules with ICE cars). If you consider how many benefits you get for the money, EV's in general are totally affordable for someone who drives 20+ miles daily. A cheap Renault ZOE or VW eUP/eGolf will be cheaper to use for 10-15 years than the cheapest piece of crap ICE car Dacia Logan ;)
Why does no one talk about the amount of electricity that is needed to make gasoline, that’s 6kwh/gallon, or 1.25 kwh/litre. On that amount of electricity alone my Nissan leaf drives 6km at 120kmph! When you drive a fossil fuel car you drive on gasoline AND coal So driving electric doesn’t use that much more electricity as they say!
Sorry but could this be the next bubble? Can the batteries be charged more than 500-600 times? How much will it cost to replace the batteries? How long does it take to charge the battery?
Taking battery replacement into account, the cost of ownership of electric car is still better. Keep in mind that this tech will improve with time. So replacement batteries 7-10 yrs hence will be likely be cheaper lighter, longer lasting, faster to charge, etc., ...
It's not quick as filling up gas that's for sure. No one wanna wait 30 minutes to recharge a battery come on people have stuff do to, especially in commercial business. Most commercial trucks and school bus already have electric motors. EATON does all of that.
I charge my BMW i3 from a 3.5 kW solar panel the size of a one car garage or standard parking space. it gives me 50 miles/day, saves 4 1/2 tons of CO2 annually, and I do not use gasoline anymore. If we are going to fancy ourselves as homo sapiens (thinking man) we better start soon and dump the inefficient i.c. engine.
China hugely invested on renewable energy, and then after India also invest huge in renewable energy. India will not going to add more(or very less) power plant based on coil. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_India So I don't think coal demand will remain same even after EV revolution(means 90% people will use EV only). And that time, surely the heaven will sift from middle east to congo Africa.
This report is very short sighted. A clean power grid is slowly evolving, battery design is changing to exclude cobalt. Electric cars, trucks, trains and aeroplanes are the future.
This documentary forgot to mention about people also shifting from coal to renewable energy like solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear power plants and hydro dams. In the near future, coal power plants will be a small percentage once battery problem is solved. So there’s a reason why some countries promote EVs and will ban combustion cars in 202x years. There are more benefits.
Eventually electric cars will be the least expensive cars on planet Earth period. Indeed they will be dirty cheap, as cheap as computer power is today. The EV's are simply computers on wheeles and the development of their price is the function of technology and time in a kind of algebraic progression.
The underlying "uncomfortable truth" is false and brings shame to The Economist. The real truth is simply that EV's will make the world much cleaner in every way. The existing power plants are in average much cleaner than cars even when using coal. Cleaner grid is a very comfortable and should be embarrassed even if the initial cost high. Why is there no mention that some countries already produce more clean energy then they can use and therefor sell it to neighboring countries? EVs will solve this by using the excess energy to charge EV batteries. This buffer for solar and wind energy is what really is needed. The part about cobalt mining is made like a anti EV propaganda video. Child labor is a global issue, but not part of the clean energy issue and using it here must question the purpose of message in the video.
Refining a gallon of gas takes about 4KwH of electricity. Then there is the energy to pump the oil out of the ground and transport it to the refinery. Then the energy to transport the gasoline to the filling station and the electricity used by the filling station to provide the car owner with that gallon of gas. This isn't just the energy to get it from the filling station tanks in the ground to the car's tank, but also the energy to operate the filling station. Elon Musk claims that the total is about 6KwH which would power an electric car about the same distance as a gallon of gas.
The only argument I can hear or read about the downsides of electric vehicle domination is that some of the electricity will be produced unclean. Then improve on sustainable energy and problem solved??
There is no doubt that sewerage when emptied onto the street is a health hazard. We worked that out long ago. We have somehow ignored the obvious when it comes to air pollution. Yes, for many parts of the world electricity equals coal, equals 'dirty' electricity but surely the point is missed. I would much prefer to have my 'sewerage' treated centrally (think power station = sewerage treatment plant). PS. At the local Tesla showroom, here in Sydney, they leave the car running lights on at night. Even with the best internal combustion engined car, if you leave that engine running all night, then you just killed the poor budgie. Let's at least move the waste to a central place. A couple of hundred million asthma sufferers would agree.
We don't need to update the grid, we need escape our dependence from it. Local energy creation, storage and usage is the future. We need to make the transition to renewables as quickly as possible and shake the shackles of the oil and gas cartels.
Remember that petrol or diesel cars are not just dirty and energy inefficient when used, but the refining of petrol and diesel is also energy inefficient and dirty. So the claim that electric cars do not reduce energy consumption and pollution, and simply shift the pollution production to dirty power stations is a bit rich.
Many people always say that electric cars are dirtier than cars that run on gas or diesel because a lot of the electricity comes from coal. There is one thing that they always forget: it already takes a shit load of electricity and fuel just to make gas or diesel. Including extracting the oil , then transporting it to the refinery then actually making the gas and diesel out of the oil, then distributing it to the gas stations and after all that you burn it and create even more emissions. So even if all of the electricity was generated by burning coal (which it never is) electric cars would still be cleaner and more efficient.
I've got some "uncomfortable truths" for The Economist: Henry Tricks' "dirty little secret" is that he is willfully misleading viewers, or at least putting a lot of editorial spin on this segment. We know that a lot of our electrical energy comes from coal but the point is that the proportion is decreasing rapidly and will continue to do so, in China as in Europe. Mr Tricks (how apt) as Energy and Commodities Editor at the UK-based The Economist surely knows this; see, for example: www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/08/25/uk-coal-power-peters-lowest-135-years/ It is not a "dirty secret", Mr Tricks, it is an issue that we will deal with just as soon as we can. My e-Golf is charged with electricity from a wind farm that I am able to buy for my home, today, even in New Jersey.
4:31 Mr Trick's second anti-EV argument is that we should continue to burn polluting oil in order to prop up the existing political order in the Middle East. What an absurd position! His third issue is with cobalt -- but this is pure whataboutery as the same argument applies to all extractive industries and the resources they exploit. That this could be fashioned into a moral argument against the uptake of EVs is just astonishing.
2018 is a little unrealistic for EVs to take off. Charging locations are still inadequate. 30 min charging times is an annoyance vs 5 min refueling. Outside of Tesla, most EVs are limited to small cars and Americans like trucks and suvs. And even Tesla's EVs are prohibitively expensive. It will take time and lot of investment from government, private and public institutions.
Not really. Charge up at home, drive around like normal, hundreds of miles if you want, then return home, all on one charge, and it costs pennies compared to petrol. "Charging stations" are just a bonus, not a necessity. And what is a "Charging station?" It's just an electrical outlet. Every gas station already has everything they need to become a "charging station" tomorrow morning. No big investments are needed. Way to promote silly worries though.
Power stations run at 50% efficiency all the time. Petrol cars peak at 25% only when driving 50miles/h. So yes electric driving is more environmentally friendly even when powered by coal.
China already has mines in the Congo for lithium mining. Kind of interesting. If it's done correctly, lithium mining could be a financial opportunities to the countries with the largest deposits, and shift money from the violent middle east to different countries in greater need of the trade. Of course, when all that matters is bigger profits, there's bound to be abuse and exploitation...
