Electric Car’s Carbon Footprint Criticised In New Report.
November 27, 2020
By Paul Homewood
Whoops!
From the Telegraph:
36 Comments
Comments are closed.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.
Recent Comments
glen cullen on Drivers may struggle to buy pe… saighdear on A Mild April saighdear on Compulsory smart meters crucia… saighdear on Drivers may struggle to buy pe… Gamecock on Drivers may struggle to buy pe… kzbkzb on Hottest Summer For 2000 Y… Gamecock on Compulsory smart meters crucia… kzbkzb on Drax To Build Wood Power Cargo… Gamecock on Drivers may struggle to buy pe… michael shaw on Compulsory smart meters crucia…
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Electric cars can give a thrilling drive but are otherwise totally bad.
Good lad!(Matt Western happens to be our local MP)
Isn’t Emma one of the Green press establishment?
It is sad to speculate about how much money is being wasted on so-called Environmental projects and quangos. There are literally hundreds of organisations being sponsored to produce “evidence” and support the meme. The Eco-freaks claim the big-oil sponsors all of us “deniers”, yet now big-oil has seen the pound signs and is taking the money too, I have never seen any evidence of them really fighting back, apart from the USA court cases of course.
Of course forcing people out of their ICE cars before the end of their economic lives, with the CO2 already spent in their manufacture, would further cancel any supposed CO2 savings.
Someone should tell Boris.
He would not understand , he is not tecknical in any way. He does not know that CO2 is a plant food, not a polutant.
Even if he did, he’s got a green girlfriend & his brain is kept in the trouser dept.
As my old granny used to say “c**t will draw you further than gunpowder will throw you! “
He can count!
The degree of wilful misinformation surrounding the bogus claims of the climate fatcaterati is no coincidence. Even Blind Freddie can see the Emperor is in his birthday suit.
None of this is based on any credible data at any level because if it was there would be numbers put out there constantly, which if reasonably sourced and correct would shut us all up (does not mean of course that the numbers would tell the truth).
Every way you turn there is misinformation, disinformation and shear downright dishonesty all mixed together with incessant thinly veiled marxism promoted as the solution.
If they are really telling the truth as they claim then where is the scientifically supportable argument supported by statistically significant empirical data in spite of 40 years and counting of nothing but crap instead? Why in place of this are we under a barrage of pure bullcrap wrapped up in marxist propaganda?
@ AC Osborn.
That someone is Princess Nut Nuts and she’s whispered plenty in his accommodating lughole already. That’s what’s got us into this latest mess.
BTW government are well aware of the limitations of the national grid, electric car range and high prices. All those shortcomings will contribute to decimating car use by the masses. That’s their real aim here.
It is actually Princess Nut Nut. I prefer Dr North’s son, Pete, who labelled her the ‘court prostitute’.
Good post.
Thanks.
Right back to planet of the humans?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/27/climate-science-vs-environmentalism/
What about battery life? The piece in The Times says 8 years and another CO2 dollop. Let’s ignore Congolese child cobalt miners. And let’s not forget that CO2 doesn’t drive the weather.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, what happens to the second hand car market?
Why would anyone buy a 6 year old EV with the battery replacement bill looming, and a considerable reduction in charge-holding capacity from new?
So an EV is likely to be scrapped at half the age of an ICE car?
Indeed, with EV batteries tending to be pretty rubbish for propulsion once they decline to below 80% of their nameplate capacity, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of, very difficult and expensive to recycle, environmentally unfriendly batteries littering the planet. The government mandated promotion of EVs is simply another shining example of the (un)joined up thinking by our technically lobotomised masters.
I have yet to read today’s Times from cover to cover but on page 16 Graeme Paton says that a study (polestar) has reported that electric cars are only greener than petrol after 50,000 miles. CO2 produced during manufacture is reported for a Volvo XC 40 as 14 tonnes . For a Vovo electric Polestar 2 the amount is 24 tonnes. Reality dawns but slowly.
Good reading, too, for The Times’ Environmental Editor , Ben Webster, writing on the same page about funds deficit for flood defences.
Slightly off thread but a quick look shows the value of a Nissan Leaf falling linearly at £5000 a year or £13.60 a day
That’s a spectacular depreciation
No sir. I have checked Leaf depreciation twice in the last few years. Both times, the numbers came out the same: 71% depreciation in two years. Absolutely CATASTROPHIC!
Nearly $1,000 a MONTH! $33 a day.
The only successful EVs were milk floats. They had to be quiet, didn’t travel far and could be left on charge all day.
I was going to send that cutting in!
Regarding the electric vehicle/ debate, as a young mechanic I worked with electric vehicles for a while for the then Post office telephones who reasearched all sorts of things behind the scenes. I remember being told to be careful not to over charge the batteries as it damaged them .It seems to me that apart from appearance and different materials we haven’t moved forward that much in 40 years.
James May is one of his programmes suggested that we have not progressed at all since the first battery car as the real normal use range is still 90 miles.
As a recent Forbes article pointed out, by trying to emulate real cars the battery cars are way too expensive for what they can deliver. They only have any use for short journeys in urban areas and should be modelled on an uprated golf buggy which will bring the price down to say £6000. The original milk floats had lead acid batteries which are so much cheaper than those in battery cars.
The bulk and weight of batteries mean they’re only really feasible for cars of Tesla Model 3 size or greater. Cars of this size are typically quite wasteful in their packaging so there is ample potential to reconfigure them to accommodate a usefully sized battery while having space for passengers and luggage. These larger cars obviously have more embedded carbon and higher fuel costs, basically negating any environmental advantages of prestige e cars. If you really want to help the environment buy a supermini.
That said, if I had the money to waste on “prestige” car I’d probably waste it on a Tesla rather than a big Audi or BMW.
It’s quite interesting to see how that translates in this chart:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/e1ofS/1/
What Car? had a go at looking at the “real range” of EVs. Mostly it takes a big expensive hulk to get anywhere. Anything less is impractical for anything other than commuting.
Greater transparency from carmakers. That’s rich. Carmakers are making what the Left and government demand. Emma wants the carmakers to declare it stupid. It’s not their job to challenge the press and the government. Indeed, as many businesses have found, fighting back on environmental issues will get you crushed.
Emma’s observations are good, but carmakers are NOT the problem. In fact, I suspect Emma Gatten, Environmental Editor, is part of the PROBLEM. She demands her victims denounce what she had a hand in producing.
Emma Gatten sen’imen’al over CO2.
Are you a new political party about to write a vote-winning manifesto? Read the last 3 posts on Paul’s blog and help yourself. Corrupt Banks, uncosted/useless windmills, hidden CO2 from electric cars.
ReformUK – just what are you waiting for?
And talking of the carbon footprint of EVs, I can’t help but recall the learned Professor Michael Kelly’s recent paper detailing the potential impact of the ‘net zero’ planned electrification of the UK economy. In particular, when referring to EVs he surmised that,
“The size of the (EV) battery means that they require huge quantities of materials in their manufacture. If we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, and assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials:
• 207,900 tonnes of cobalt – just under twice the annual global production;
• 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate – three quarters of the world’s production;
• at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium – nearly the entire world production of neodymium;
• 2,362,500 tonnes of copper – more than half the world’s production in 2018.”
Obviously, digging up all that lot, transporting, manufacturing and delivering it to the end user (using lots of fossil fuels in the process) would entail creating a carbon footprint that would dwarf anything mankind has seen to date. And that’s just for the UK. The proposed switch is clearly unrealisable, never mind affordable. The reality will be a complete transformation in society, but not in a good way. Be afraid folks, be very afraid.
It is notable that the Chinese are already buying up the mineral deposits in many of the countries who have substantial sources of them. And the Chinese themselves have large deposits of lithium. The prices are bound to go up. Yes, be afraid.
I recall reading an article which stated that the batteries of EV’s could need replacing at a considerably lower mileage than 50,000, due to deterioration of their efficiency, particularly in relation to fast chargers. I’m betting that these predictions don’t include that scenario. Oh, calamity!
Is the last sentence that says it all. We’ll have to get rid of the lot. Great plan.
Devoncamel: Indeed it does. There is no real hope of decarbonizing our carbon (CO2) emissions when zero emissions is one of the goals and NET-zero is the other of those two Paris Accord inspired goals. Quite simply impossible. Do the maths.
I don’t believe these studies for the simple reason, from what I have seen, the researchers simply take the average CO per Mwatt hr say and extrapolate that as being the figure to charge electric cars (And heat pumps). They do not understand how the grid works.
This is not accurate, taken simply if electric cars require x amounts of power then that power will only come from dispatchable sources of generation, mainly gas. This is because renewables and nuclear genertaion is already at full output at any given time (there will be the odd exceptions but very minute), Demand more power from the grid which renewables and nuclear cannot supply, gas, coal and the very small hydro we have will be where that power comes from. (Not pumped storage, by the way, that is also from fossil fuel generation for the same reason)
Many on here are familiar with the Gridwatch Templar site and essentially the CCGT graph is a measure of CO2 emission. That will rise with greater numbers of EVs proportional to the EV demand. I.e. E.V.s are powered by fossil fuel.
To be more accurate, long term grid CO2 emissions will be a balance between the amount of expanded renewable generation that it can handle, which may be less than the projected expansion. (Which is much less than the headline figures as the availability factor is low, so forty Gwatt capacity will give approximately sixteen.) and the declining performance of existing wind farms and the decommissioning of older ones, the closure of many of our nuclear stations eventually to be replaced with new. So the amount projected for say ten to twenty years in the future is a large measure of guess work.
My feeling is there will be little or no reduction in the medium term to say mid thirties to twenty forty?
The Committee for Climate Change say we still need gas generation but envisage Carbon Capture and Storage. Since storage of high level radioactive material is problematical, I suggest that problem is a simple matter to overcome compared to CCS and could be just as leathal in the event of leakage to atmosphere?
Just wait till they get the high speed high wattage chargers, Then watch the batteries deteriorate even faster.
One user’s EV ecperience:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/nov/28/electric-cars-porsche-charging-network
Fantastic, Lucy and Kevin!
Sun., p.m., prob .best Alison and Douglas (all from the same “bubble”, of course, will probably be here)
We’ll discuss on Wednesday.
Fridge freezer just the job, thanks for your wonderful work on that!
I will copy to you a message I sent to Peter tonight which I could not speak on the phone.
Love, Charles.
On Sun, 29 Nov 2020, 20:09 NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT, wrote:
> Aaron Halliwell commented: “One user’s EV ecperience: > https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/nov/28/electric-cars-porsche-charging-network > ” >
Tipsy again Charles? Oh dear!