My concern is safety (car wreaks), distaste for touch interfaces (also safety related) and the environmental (ironic, I know) and social impact of rare earths mining.
Petrol fire is undoubtedly easier to come by and more dangerous in case of a crash. Touch interfaces aren't specifically tied to electric vehicles; it's a common disease on all modern vehicles, fortunately on the decline. Environmentally, in countries with reasonably balanced (i.e. not China and Poland) power generation, EVs are *way better* than ICEs, without the slightest room for debate.
Does that mean mankind has to grow its energy usage 24 times to match the energy absorbed by the Earth?
Thinking about energy usage always puzzles me. I'm not even sure if driving a car from one city to another really uses energy. For example, let's look at it this way: The energy from the sun is heating earth. When we use some of it to drive a solar-powered electric car from one city to another, does that lower the temperature of planet earth? I would think it does not. So why did we get the energy to drive the car fo…
It can be more instructive to consider entropy rather than energy usage.
The energy coming from the sun has low entropy and that makes it easy to capture and convert into electricity/plants etc. When you use some of that energy to move a car, you're converting the useful low entropy of the electricity/fuel into high entropy "waste" heat that can no longer be easily captured and used.
Beside all of that, if you convert let's say 1/10 of cars with internal combustion engines to electric motor cars, there is no electricity to charge them. Which also leads to envirnonmental problems - creating so much electricity (+ CO2 emmision from thermal-electric plants). Just count average low electric car consumption 15kWh/100km.
Like internal combustion is any better at this.
Of course it isn't. I don't vote for internal combustion technology at all. Both are environmental problem. Looking at all the (ex) hype about electric cars, sometime it looks like electrics - they clean the environment...
Internal combustion will stay for a long time in heavy machinery, sea and air transport, which is also problem, if not prevalent, so electric cars will bring negligible health improvement to planet. And add all the wars - our efforts to lower carbon footprint on this planet are so funny and naive.
Beside all of that, if you convert let's say 1/10 of cars with internal combustion engines to electric motor cars, there is no electricity to charge them. Which also leads to envirnonmental problems - creating so much electricity (+ CO2 emmision from thermal-electric plants). Just count average low electric car consumption 15kWh/100km.
While true if you haven't noticed it Solar and Wind are taking off at a staggering rate for electrical production. At prices around $15 per MWH they are substantially cheaper than gas/coal/oil electrical production. The economics just work out now in a big way and renewables are so much cheaper fossil fuels days are numbered.
Besides if you just car about the economics and not the potential reduction on the planet they are still cheaper to run over their lifetime compared to petrol.
"Politicians in Europe know they will eventually have to impose taxes on electricity (or else raise income taxes)" I heard that a lot, but are we sure about this? Petrol in Europe is taxed at about 50%, but is almost exclusively imported, thus this is the only income for gouvernements. Electricity, on the other side, is also taxed (about 25% here in Belgium). But's it's almost entirely produced in the Union, which cr…
I don't think we will increasy taxes for electricity. How do you even to that, when most cars are charged at home. The more likely scenario is that governments will impose higher road use charges. That has been a trend anyway in most of the developed world.
My concern is safety (car wreaks), distaste for touch interfaces (also safety related) and the environmental (ironic, I know) and social impact of rare earths mining.
Rare earths are not a major component in car batteries. They are mostly used in the electric motors for the magnets and it's acutally quite easy to replace them. Mining of lithium, copper, nickel, will have to expand in the future. But it's nothing in comparison to the damage that is done with the extraction of oil and gas.
Yes, people afraid of rare earth and lithium mining should get some numbers right first: We extract 4 BILLION TONS of oil from the ground every year. In comparison, we extract a few million tons of lithium (and it's reusable / recyclable), and a few tens of thousand tons of rare earths.
The FUD about mining is pure big oil propaganda, frankly.
Beside all of that, if you convert let's say 1/10 of cars with internal combustion engines to electric motor cars, there is no electricity to charge them. Which also leads to envirnonmental problems - creating so much electricity (+ CO2 emmision from thermal-electric plants). Just count average low electric car consumption 15kWh/100km.
Big power plants are more efficient than small ones, otherwise everyone would have a generator at home. The question is what difference batteries make.
Does that mean mankind has to grow its energy usage 24 times to match the energy absorbed by the Earth?
Thinking about energy usage always puzzles me. I'm not even sure if driving a car from one city to another really uses energy. For example, let's look at it this way: The energy from the sun is heating earth. When we use some of it to drive a solar-powered electric car from one city to another, does that lower the temperature of planet earth? I would think it does not. So why did we get the energy to drive the car fo…
Energy is, in fact, conserved, as you point out. When we colloqually talk about 'using energy', we are generally referring to converting low-entropy energy (like electricity, sunlight, chemical energy from fuel) into high-entropy energy (ultimately dissipated as heat in the air), hopefully doing useful work along the way. High-entropy energy cannot generally be harnessed to do useful work anywhere nearly as easily as low-entropy energy.
Right now, electric cars are still at a disadvantage because of lower production volumes. It's not only the material cost of the battery and the motor that makes them more expensive, but also the share of the development costs that each sale has to recoup. In the not so distant future I think petrol and diesel cars are going to be at a disadvantage because of this. I still own a quite old (12 years, but low mileage)…
That’s not the only thing. Electric vehicles are generally cheaper-built compared to gasoline cars at the same price point. They have cost- and weight-saving compromises that make them tangibly feel less valuable.
They are cheaper built because of the high share of R&D cost each car has to contribute.
"Politicians in Europe know they will eventually have to impose taxes on electricity (or else raise income taxes)" I heard that a lot, but are we sure about this? Petrol in Europe is taxed at about 50%, but is almost exclusively imported, thus this is the only income for gouvernements. Electricity, on the other side, is also taxed (about 25% here in Belgium). But's it's almost entirely produced in the Union, which cr…
Petrol taxes include road tax in a lot of places, that will have to be replaced somehow once the share of electric cars becomes big enough.
Which countries do that? (Genuinely curious)
Here in the UK, there's a lot of drivers who believe that road tax exists (not since 1937) and whilst there's a similar concept with VED (Vehicle Excise Duty), it's not used used specifically for fixing roads - that comes from general taxation.
Due to the misinformation, we sometimes get EV drivers complaining about cyclists because "they don't pay road tax", whereas EV owners don't even pay VED as it's based on tailpipe emissions. This means that cyclists (and pedestrians etc) are in effect subsidising the heavy vehicle drivers and helping to pay for the damage that heavy vehicles cause to the roads (roughly proportional to the fourth power of weight of the vehicle).