I'm an EE also, and honestly I would say your friend is reading reports more than doing the math. I've read all of those "reports" (that most people commenting here about now dirty EV's are have read) and they are full of invalid assumptions. The most telling one is that most of them assume that the EV is charged 100% by coal its entire life -- which you could not do if you wanted to since most power companies today have a meaningful percentage of power from renewable sources (and that percentage will rise only rise over time). The EV's themselves are so simple and major parts like the electric motor are far more universal and reusable from the junkyard than ICE engines that have several thousand individual part and that are unique to each car. Even with all of those blatantly false assumptions, the EV's still win after a certain number of miles. If you do the actual math on efficiency, and refueling impact, it's not even in the realm of being remotely close.
Peter indeed, she was doing the math based upon what happens in a Australia. In Victoria, brown coal supplies about 66% of the grid. I do not know how this is calculated though, for example, is it 40% during the day and 100% in the evening (when most EVs would be charging)? I would love to know the embodied energy component of going all solar too, does anyone know? I'm not anti EV, I'm just really curious about the long term viability, because I don't know what problem they are trying to solve. Especially here in Australia, where we have very poor infrastructure and mass wastage on a bloated and inefficient political system that is self serving, intensely uncompetitive and caters to welfare minorities, BTW, these aspects fall on both sides of the political spectrum. Can you also explain the possible myth regarding mining rare earths for electric cars? Cobalt, manganese, nickel and copper are used in a plethora of other devices, just look at any Apple product. Surely mining for these was in full swing before the uptake of electric vehicles? Or is it simply the quantity of these minerals that is the problem (or not)?
Volkswagen and Volvo, both EV manufacturers, have done the actual math and reached much the same conclusions as the report Carl quoted earlier. Minimum 100K kilometres to "break even on CO2", which for most people using a 2nd car in Australia is 10 years and would be close to the life of the battery. I have a friend in NZ who imports used EV's from Japan (5 year old cars are very difficult to register in Japan so very cheap) and he has learned that 8 years is the average battery life, although of course this is very dependent on how the battery is cycled. Not fully discharging and then slowly recharging would increase life.
Not a myth. Rare earth minerals are needed to make permanent magnets for electric motors and generators. A windmill magnet is of course much larger than an EV motor magnet. Rare earths are common, it's just that they occur in extremely low concentrations, so you have to mine and process approximately 1000Kg of ore to extract 1 Kg of minerals. An EV motor uses 2 to 5 Kg, depending on size. Also lots of energy and toxic chemicals needed to extract the minerals. China makes 90% of the world's supply, no problem with waste products, they just put it in huge ponds which eventually leach into rivers. The renewable / EV industry is trying to head off the rare earths issue by talking about future EV motors made without them. This is a frequent tactic, also used for battery technology - a breakthrough is always imminent. But what you can make work in a laboratory isn't necessarily what can be manufactured in volume. I spent a lot of effort and money on battery tech in the early 2000's, in conjunction with local universities. Nothing we worked on then made it to production. Cobalt is used for battery cathodes. Again, cobalt-free batteries are "just around the corner". Mining for rare earths, nickel and copper has been in full swing for a long time, but replacing ICE's with EV's and the wind & solar needed to meet "net zero" targets represents many times current production capacity and indeed known reserves. A figure that sticks in my mind is 500 times current capacity for copper alone. All of this to change the weather, because of a hypothesis for which no reproducible evidence exists, just coincidence.
You miss the point that most tesla owners do NOT charge from the grid - they charge from home solar /battery array.
I started to read this but lost interest lol. https://electricvehiclecouncil.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Home-EV-charging-2030.pdf
Regardless of whether that’s true or not (I’m sceptical), how can we possibly get to the kind of % of EV ownership that governments are dreaming we’ll get to while the infrastructure is so far away from what would be needed? How about the millions of people whom live in apartments in Sydney and Melbourne? What are they supposed to do? Don’t worry about solar, most of them wouldn’t even have a plug to plug the car into regardless of what was powering it.
I was not making any point about how the Tesla was charged. I was reporting how the figures I quoted were calculated. Now that you mention it. You're right, most Teslas in Australia are charged from a home solar/battery array exclusively..... 12%
Tesla eliminated cobalt in its "standard range" batteries in 2022, still needs Cobalt for "long range" models due to higher energy density (https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/energy-transition/042122-almost-half-of-tesla-evs-produced-in-q1-had-no-nickel-cobalt-in-battery)
Volvo study, 109,918 kms to break even : https://www.carscoops.com/2021/11/volvo-says-manufacturing-an-electric-car-generates-70-percent-more-emissions-than-its-petrol-equivalent/ VW, circa 120,000 kms to break even: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-6963195/Electric-cars-SMALLER-carbon-footprints-lifetime-says-VW.html We are not told the assumptions regarding the mix of renewable vs hydrocarbon power generation. But I suspect that all such studies assume zero carbon for renewables, when we all know that wind and solar have their own manufacturing footprint, with a short life before replacement. Also ignored is the addition power distribution required for remote wind and solar farms. I have an 8 hour power outage scheduled today, so the transformer in my street can be replaced with a much higher capacity. What has changed? Simple, 20% of my neighbors have EVs. What's the CO2 generated making a transformer?
I'm NOT saying 'everyone should have an EV' or supporting subsidies or any of the things you presume - just pointing out the advantages MANY owners find...
What's the 12%? Of Teslas or of total EV? By the way, doesn't have to be from battery array, just solar panels still counts.
Don't think it might also have something to do with all the neighbours whose solar arrays are feeding IN to an antique grid? Despite all the drama about extra power usage by EVs (and why don't people get equally outraged by the massive increase in power consumption by airconditioners, TVs, computers etc etc) the fact is most grid issues are because of the amount of power being fed IN .
Thanks for the articles. I'm also surprised VW doesn't have the breakdown of power source type assumed in their modelling, but I think Germany has among the highest coal usage in Europe. The recurring impact is most important. Although higher CO2 is required to build the EV, the operational impact was 111 g/km for the combustion engine Golf GTI versus 62 g/km CO2 produced by the use and charging of the e-Golf (including the emissions produced to generate the power grid used to charge). It goes on to say that it would drop to just 2 g/km CO2 if the e-Golf was using only renewables, so the difference in ongoing usage will be much, much lower as renewables play a larger role in power production. Building anything requires CO2 -- drilling, fracking, offshore drilling rigs, transporting oil, refining -- all of it requires significant CO2. One-time infrastructure is far less critical than what gets consumed on an ongoing recurring basis. I'm not aware of windmills having short lifespans -- 20 to 25 years seems to be typical. Power transformers don't last forever, average lifespan is about 20 years for those also. Gas pumps at gas stations probably get replaced every decade or so. Just like everything else in technology, batteries will improve over time in all respects (cost, impact, weight, etc). I remember in the early 90's, 300Mb computer disk drives were $5000, weighed 20lbs, and were 18" by 6" in size (just for the removable disk alone, the drive was extremely expensive and heavy) - now you can buy 8Tb in a small drive with far better performance for $150. Tesla has already eliminated cobalt and nickel from some of their batteries. Of course, there is no question we need a significant breakthrough on battery cost in order for EV's to be viable for everyone (right now it works well for those who trade in or lease cars every few years) -- but you will never get their if you don't build EV cars now, which funds the innovation to reduce all of the barriers.
OK, let me explain it another way: 12% of Tesla product in Australia are charged from a home solar/battery array exclusively. You said "Most". Curious how you managed to get "Most" from 12%
