From Climate Scepticism

By Jit

A pop quiz

As soon as I saw this headline at the Daily Mail,

Drivers of petrol and diesel cars have ‘really poor’ knowledge about EVs and it’s stopping many from going green, think tank claims

I knew fun was going to ensue. The theme is a constant one, and is as annoying as the McDonald’s chirpy whistle that seems to crop up at every ad break on commercial radio. ICE drivers are as thick as porridge, and their tiny brains have been filled up with misinformation by people with vested interests in something-or-other. [Big Oil, perhaps.] Everything they think they know about EVs is pi radians wrong.

In its recent poll, 57 per cent of 1,000 UK drivers of conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars answered no more than two out of 10 questions about EVs correctly.

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, which commissioned the survey, blamed a ‘constant stream of EV misinformation’ for limiting drivers’ knowledge about battery-powered cars.

A quiz! I hate quizzes. But still. Let’s pray these 10 questions are provided, so that we can test how ignorant we are…

Bingo!

Let’s see if we can get more than two out of ten correct. It’s TRUE or FALSE for each. Jot your answers on the back of your packet of Silk Cut, and we’ll compare notes at the end. [The suspicion arises that we may differ from the ECIU on some of the answers; we’ll see.]

Here are the questions:

1. The total upfront costs for an EV are higher than a petrol car

2. The total lifetime CO2 emissions of an EV (from building, driving and scrapping) are no less than those of a petrol car

3. More natural resources are extracted from the earth to build and fuel an EV than are extracted to build and fuel a petrol car

4. EVs pose a threat to the structural integrity of the UK’s car parks

5. EVs are more likely to catch fire than petrol cars

6. EVs are no better for urban air quality than petrol cars

7. The UK is not on course to install the charging infrastructure it will need to make the transition to EVs

8. EV drivers currently pay more for their insurance than petrol car drivers

9. The UK’s grid will not be able to cope with the extra demand that will be created by the UK’s shift to EVs

10. Switching to EV’s will weaken the UK’s energy independence

DISCUSSION

1. The total upfront costs for an EV are higher than a petrol car

TRUE. Not even a climate alarmist engaging in motivated reasoning could come to any other conclusion.

2. The total lifetime CO2 emissions of an EV (from building, driving and scrapping) are no less than those of a petrol car

FALSE. Why did they have to put the “no less” in there when “more” would have made an easier-to-grok question? I’m saying FALSE but there is plenty of nuance. It depends on what electricity sources charge the car, and how many miles the car does before it dies. We have seen that the crossing-over point is a long way into a car’s life, and beyond the age at which many die. However, I’m prepared to grant the ECIU this one.

3. More natural resources are extracted from the earth to build and fuel an EV than are extracted to build and fuel a petrol car

TRUE. They obviously require more materials to build, and the great green future is powered by electricity, which requires more materials to build. We are trading a fossil-fuel intensive system for a materials-intensive system (as I think Mark Mills may have pointed out). But there is nuance here. Ore has to be “extracted” in vast quantities to provide the elements necessary to build an EV. But most of it ends up as spoil. Does this count as “extracted”? If you say yes, the answer is TRUE. If you only count the mass of the end product, the answer is FALSE. Remember too that extracting all this stuff requires infrastructure of its own that is far larger for battery components than drilling for oil.

4. EVs pose a threat to the structural integrity of the UK’s car parks

FALSE. A ludicrous suggestion.

5. EVs are more likely to catch fire than petrol cars

FALSE. Wait, what? Has Jit had his scepticism surgically removed? What about the famous, or infamous, auto-cremating habit of EVs? Well, again the answer needs a wealth of further detail before it can be answered properly. I am prepared to accept that the current population of EVs catches fire less frequently than the current fleet of ICE cars. Is that what the question meant? This situation arises because the average age of an ICE car on the road is far higher than that of EVs. Many more ICEs have reached the inflexion point where a failure ending in fire becomes more likely. In a situation with a stable population of both types, I do not know what the answer is. Does anyone? I do know that the consequences of an EV fire are on the average more serious than an ICE fire.

And there is another fat fly in the ointment. A large proportion of car fires are caused by arson. According to that trustworthy source the AA,

The biggest cause of vehicle fires attended by fire brigades is arson or vandalism of parked vehicles. Dublin Fire Brigade told us that most of the car fires they attended in 2020 were due to arson, echoed by James Long, an Irish lecturer and President of the Society of Automotive Forensic Engineers, who said most fires he has investigated have had a deliberate cause. Figures for the UK show that around half of all vehicle fires between 2015 and 2020 were “deliberate”, and that’s before you count accidental fires caused by human activity.

Have our lords and masters thought this through? You do have to wonder. In some places, burning cars is an annual celebration.

A total of 874 cars have been set alight during New Year’s Eve celebrations in France, police say.

6. EVs are no better for urban air quality than petrol cars

TRUE. But again there is nuance. If we are comparing new petrol cars with new EVs, as we have seen on this blog, tyre dust casts a dark shadow over EVs’ performance. But if you compare a new EV to the ICE fleet at large, the EV might win. There are certainly clunkers out there that emit clouds of noxious smoke.

7. The UK is not on course to install the charging infrastructure it will need to make the transition to EVs

I don’t know how to answer this. The charging infrastructure is, or should be, an organic development based on the demand for charging. If we build as many chargers as we “need,” then we will have hundreds of thousands of chargers standing idle most of the time. If you’re asking me are we on course for 300,000 chargers, the answer is FALSE.

8. EV drivers currently pay more for their insurance than petrol car drivers

TRUE. At least, according to news reports.

9. The UK’s grid will not be able to cope with the extra demand that will be created by the UK’s shift to EVs

FALSE. I don’t believe this. Not every EV will want to charge at once, and the authorities have nefarious means to prevent them from charging, should they need to deploy them. Sceptical talking points on this often do not account for the fact that only a small proportion of EVs will be charging at any one time.

10. Switching to EV’s will weaken the UK’s energy independence

I don’t know the answer here. Either way, our energy independence is being curtailed. On the one hand, increasing electrification necessitates the use of interconnectors, which connect to, er, countries that are not the UK. On the other hand, our oil and gas extraction industry has been destroyed, so our dependence on foreign sources for that is only going to increase. I would call this question a score draw.

I think they missed

11. EVs are cheaper to run than ICE cars

For this I was going to go for neither TRUE nor FALSE, since it heavily depends on your circumstances. Now that is an interesting angle I had not thought of before. Think of it this way: an ICE car costs everyone up and down the country exactly the same to run. Sure, there may be variable insurance costs based on where you live, and the costs of fuel varies too. But by and large everything is the same. Compare that situation to an EV. If you have the luxury to charge at home, then undoubtedly you’re winning on running costs vs an ICE. But if you’re in the unhappy situation that you are not the proud possessor of a nice crunchy gravel driveway and have to make use of those foul public chargers, all bets are off. You could well find your EV costs more.

[Out-of-date comparison here.]

And it would be remiss of me not to point out all the tax disadvantages of ICEs which are not an organic part of what it costs to run a car. There is the BIK disadvantage for company car drivers, the excise duty, the fuel duty, and the 20% VAT on the fuel (and the duty). MikeH has tentatively costed the tax foregone as £5 billion, and I have no reason to gainsay him.

Now for the answers.

1. TRUE (62% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: TRUE

2. FALSE (25% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: FALSE

3. FALSE (45% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: TRUE

4. FALSE (33% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: FALSE

5. FALSE (41% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: FALSE

6. FALSE (28% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: TRUE

7. TRUE (80% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: FALSE

8. FALSE (24% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly – 63% answered ‘don’t know’) Jit said: TRUE

9. FALSE (56% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: FALSE

10. FALSE (29% of ICE drivers answered incorrectly) Jit said: DUNNO

Looks like I got 4½ wrong. I have to admit that I’m surprised to have got question 1 right, and that 62% of ICE drivers thought EVs are cheaper to buy than ICE. A mistake here perhaps?

According to the pollsters, 57% of ICE drivers got 8/10 wrong. This may be a BS statistic, bearing in mind the percentage incorrect shown for each question.

CONCLUSION

Buy EVs, you ingrates! You may not want to, but it’s only because you’ve been getting a drip-drip-drip of misinformation from your social media echo chamber silo caves.