In the past couple of years several European countries have introduced targets for electric car adoption. In some cases, there are plans to completely ban the sale of internal combustion engines in favour of going electric. Being a petrolhead the thought of changing my zingy petrol engine for the same kind of motor used in my wife’s hair-dryer, does not exactly butter my parsnip. Now it’s very easy to simply call me a luddite, petrol-monger holding onto the past. It’s easy to paint all petrol-heads with the brush of ignorance. All for the sake of being a woke individual and signaller of virtue. It’s also easy to point the finger screaming that you just hate electric cars without even giving them a chance.
qualities that make for an excellent daily
However, as per usual, the eco-worriers have the wrong end of the stick. I have no problem with electric cars. In fact if I could afford to own one to use as a daily driver, I would. The idea of something that runs silently, smoothly and reliably, certainly has appeal. As does the instant torque available at any speed, low running costs and virtually no maintenance. These are all qualities that make for an excellent daily car, for effortless transport. My big gripe is not even with the lack of infrastructure currently available for electric cars. ESPECIALLY in the midst some more Eskom-Sponsored black-outs. In fact I only have 2 big problems with electric cars. Neither of which have anything to do with the cars themselves.
Firstly, I loath the fact that they are being marketed as a way to save the planet. I absolutely can not stand by whilst fake science is being spouted as fact by clever marketing gurus and ignorant politicians. If the aim of the electric car is to save the planet, it fails spectacularly to achieve its goal.
Secondly, if the above really is the goal for electric cars, then the entire premise is flawed as it is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist.
Electric cars, are NOT planet saviours
Electric cars in their currently most popular form, run on batteries. These batteries require large scale mining of Lithium, Nickle and Cobalt. All of which, has a massive carbon footprint and does huge amounts of environmental damage. Studies done on early electric cars and hybrids found that in some cases, the production and running of an electric car over a year, was more harmful to the environment than the same case study on a petrol Ranger Rover V8.
Now I grant you that since that study was done, production techniques of the batteries have improved. The entire process is now much cleaner. However, it’s easy to forget that it is still a pretty messy and harmful business putting these cars with many non-recyclable parts together. Not to mention that you are going to have a hard time feeling ethically superior in your electric car, once you have seen the working conditions of semi-slave- and child- labour in cobalt mines.
Even if we ignore the environmental and ethical issues with electric car production, there is still one MAJOR obstacle that can not be ignored. A massive percentage of the world’s electricity is still being generated using fossil fuels. So rather than eliminating emissions, electric cars are simply moving those emissions. From your tail-pipe, to the power station. And YES the process of taking electricity to power a car rather than petrol is more efficient. So the overall emissions from a petrol powered car will still be worse than the emissions of an electric car from the power station. However, the differences are tiny and thus, unless we suddenly start building large numbers of nuclear power stations, the reductions in emissions will be negligible in the grand scheme of things.
Solving a problem that doesn’t exist.
If you take our planet and look at a breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions, the vast majority of those gases are from natural sources. However, short of culling half of the planet’s population, there isn’t much we can do about that, so let’s focus on the 32% of emissions that are man-made. If we drill down on transport specifically, this makes up roughly 12% of ALL of the word’s man-made greenhouse emissions. Under transport is included, public transport, trucking, busses, shipping, air travel, space travel and cars. Cars, INCLUDING their production processes, make up roughly 40% of that 12%. So let’s just run through that again. Of ALL CO2 emissions world-wide, 32% are man-made. 12% of that 32% is contributed to transport. 40% of that 12% is from cars – or 1.5% of all the world’s greenhouse emissions. Worst-case-scenario, 4.8% of all man-made emissions come from cars.
So in other words, politicians, environmentalists and car manufacturers are focusing, what seems to be, ALL their resources on solving 4.8% of the problem whilst ignoring pretty much ALL the rest. Why? Because cars are everywhere. It’s easy for our brains to comprehend that with the massive numbers of cars out there on the road, they must be doing a massive amount of damage. Meanwhile, a popular cruise line that shall remain nameless, recently launched an absolute behemoth of a cruise-liner. THE SINGLE MOST POLLUTANT OBJECT ON THE PLANET! In a single year, it will have a carbon footprint larger than all the cars in South Africa.
much easier to appeal to our good nature
In fact, such is the carbon footprint of large ocean-going vessels, that if you took the largest 15 container ships in the world and parked them in dry-docks, you would be offsetting the carbon footprint of every single car on the planet! Just 15 vehicles, to offset every car in the world. But, cars are a much easier target, because they touch all our lives on a daily basis. It’s easier to tax them, with less push-back from the public, than you would get from big shipping corporations. It’s much easier to appeal to our good nature as individuals than that of a big company. Those massive ships are out of sight, so no-one thinks about them.
These are all pretty easily researchable facts that can be verified from various reliable sources. Which begs the question – who stands to gain from this push for electric cars? Is it simply politicians looking for the green vote? Are they making money out of it somehow?… Someone must be!
Getting rid of petrol entirely is completely unachievable
Of course there is also the fact that these lofty goals of going full electric by a certain date in the not-too-distant future, is completely unachievable. There is no way that infrastructure can be put up and financed in time for this switch date. Currently, even in countries with good electric car infrastructure and quick charge points, there are big problems. Charge points become congested and waiting times are long because a car needs at least 30 minutes connected to gain any meaningful amount of charge. Obviously, there are still far more cars on the road than there are charge points.
With Europe, America and China being the biggest car markets in the world, it stands to reason that manufacturers cater mainly to their requirements. If their requirements are for electric cars only, manufacturers will focus on developing electric cars to feed their markets. In fact, several auto-makers have already stopped development on ICE cars focussing on electric futures. Even Lotus, a traditionally petrolheaded brand, has said that their latest car will be their last petrol powered vehicle. My question is, where does that leave the South African market?
where will our petrol cars of the future come from?
If car manufacturers start exclusively building electric cars, what are we going to do in South Africa, where we don’t have enough electricity as it is!? Also consider that battery technology is known not to do well in climates with large temperature variations as we have here. With our electricity grid on the brink of collapse, virtually NO electric car infrastructure in place and a climate that will no doubt not be kind to the batteries that power electric cars, they may simply not be an option for us. But with the biggest car markets pressuring the biggest manufacturers into only producing electric cars, where will our cars of the future come from? We may end up in a situation where the only new cars we can buy will be produced by countries like China and India, with manufacturers that are not as strongly influenced by the European market.
I guess all we can do is hope that calmer heads will prevail. That law makers would start to focus on the real problem rather than the easy targets. I haven’t even mentioned that the European countries pushing for electric cars, are already some of the lowest producers of greenhouse gasses in the world. So reducing their emissions by 4.8% will have almost no effect on global emissions anyways. We should all do our part to protect the planet. We MUST do what we can to reduce our carbon footprint and carbon dependence. But going after the easiest target with the smallest of possible gains, is a waste of time and resources.
Unfortunately, the only thing harder to find than cheap renewable energy, is common sense. So you’d best start shopping the latest GWM catalogue.
