From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

Guest Post by Derek Spence

This is a precis of an article written by Matt Ridley for the Daily Mail earlier this month:

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Most electric car batteries are made in China, and it has made a huge investment around the world in lithium and other minerals. It also has a low labour cost and a cheap coal fired grid. (Their EV manufacturer BYD has just produced its millionth EV, outperforming Tesla.)

Electric cars still cost almost double their petrol equivalent and consumers need subsidies to buy them. Our energy infrastructure cannot be adapted easily or quickly to cope with the extra demand implied by the transition. That needs further subsidies. You then have to distribute the energy. That needs more money to upgrade the distribution grid. There is added demand from heat pumps. The upgrade on current timescales is impossible.

Cars and vans generate 70% transport emissions and transport 25% of all emissions. The emissions saving of electric cars over petrol or diesel is 25% per vehicle and the UK generates 1% of worldwide emissions. The end result is that we will have reduced global emissions of CO2 by 0.044% (less than one half of one tenth of one percent).

The other side of the equation is not considered in the overall picture. To produce an EV requires a lot of extractive industries to make an electric vehicle. The battery is key. A typical half ton EV battery requires mining and processing about 250 tons of materials. This requires a lot of diesel and electricity.

Professor Gautum Kalghatgi at Oxford University calculates an electric car with a 60 KWh battery will start with a deficit of 7.5 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, before it has driven at all. Our electric grid is powered by gas (which emits CO2 and wind turbines which require a lot of coal in their manufacture and have to be replaced every 20-30 years. VW has done a study which shows that EV has to be driven 80k before its emissions are lower than a diesel car. In Germany where the grid is driven by more coal, this comes to 125k. In China you would never reach breakeven due to their coal dependency. The breakeven is bigger for larger batteries in larger cars.

Batteries last about 100k miles. Just when you will be approaching emissions savings you will be scrapping the car or paying huge amount to replace the battery. The refining costs of refining ores is going up, not down. Batteries will increase in cost. An electric car approaching the end of its battery life will be worth nothing. This is reflected in the prices of second hand EVs already.

Internal combustion engines are continuing to get cleaner at a rapid rate while electric cars, with their extra weight will be producing more particulate waste from the wear of their tyres, than comes out of the engines of petrol cars, says Prof K. (The EVs are already having an impact on the roads and multi-story car parks due to their extra weight.)

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Matt Ridley’s full article is here.