The number of electric cars sold is up 66% in this year’s fiscal year.
President Joe Biden supports them, saying, “The great American roadtrip is going to be fully electrified”, and “There’s no turning around.”
Some left-leaning states have decided to ban all gas-powered cars completely in order to make sure that we don’t have any choice.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive decree banning them by 2035. New York, Massachusetts, and Oregon all copied California. Washington state politicians promised to make it happen faster, by 2030.
Thirty countries have also announced that they will phase out gasoline-powered cars.
This is stupid. It won’t happen. It’s magic thinking.
In my new video I highlight some “inconvenient facts” about electric cars. These are simple truths that politicians, green activists, and others don’t seem able to grasp.
Mark Mills, a Manhattan Institute physicist, says that electric cars are “amazing.” “But they won’t change the future in any significant manner (as far) as oil use and carbon dioxide emissions.”
Inconvenient truth 1: Selling more electric vehicles won’t reduce oil consumption very much.
Mills says that the world now has 15, 18 million electric cars. “If we can get to 500,000,000, it would reduce the world’s oil consumption by around 10%. It’s not a lot, but it doesn’t stop the oil consumption.”
The majority of the oil in the world is used by “airplanes and buses, big trucks, and the mining equipment that obtains the copper to make the electric cars.”
Even if all vehicles switched to electricity somehow, there’s a problem: Electricity doesn’t really make sense.
I have a lot of fun with friends who are excited about their electric cars, as long as it doesn’t pollute. When I ask them where their car’s electricity comes from, they hush when I ask.
They don’t even know. They don’t even think about it.
Inconvenient truth 2: While driving an electric vehicle emits very little carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the electricity required to charge the battery adds a lot. The majority of America’s electricity comes from burning coal and natural gas. Only 12% of electricity comes from solar or wind power.
This is something that auto companies don’t advertise. Linda Zhang, Ford’s Linda Zhang, said that electric vehicles are generally better and more sustainable for the planet in a BBC interview.
Mills says to me, “She’s an engineer for Ford.” “She’s not ignorant.”
He replies, “She’s not stupid.” “But ignorance speaks to the things you don’t know.” To make a battery, you must mine 500,000 pounds of minerals or rock.
American regulations make it difficult to mine. Most of it is done in other countries, polluting them. Some mining is done with children. Some are done in areas that employ slave labor.
Even if these horrors didn’t exist, mining adds tons of carbon to the atmosphere.
Mills says, “If you are concerned about carbon dioxide, the electric vehicle has emitted 10-20 tons (from the mining and manufacturing) before it gets to your driveway.”
Volkswagen published an honest study in which they pointed out that an electric vehicle emits more carbon dioxide after the first 60,000 miles.
To reduce emissions by “20 or 30%”, you would need to drive an electric vehicle “100,000.00 miles.”
No, it’s not.
Electric cars are less polluting if you live in New Zealand where there is a lot of hydro and geothermal power. However, in America, your “zero emission vehicle” emits a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
This is something that politicians and electric car sellers do not mention. Most likely, they don’t even know.
Three more facts about electric cars will be covered in a future column.
