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‘The More Electric Vehicles We Build, the Worse CO2 Gets’
Even though Toyota Motor Company will soon start selling their own versions of electric cars, Akio Toyoda, president of the company, isn’t thrilled with the EV rage and had two important points to make about electric vehicles (EVs).
The first point is that EVs are too expensive for most people to afford. His company’s marketing model is based on affordable cars, so he knows what he’s talking about. He called EVs “a flower on a high summit” that would not penetrate the market much further than they already have. EVs sold now in the US depend heavily on government subsidies. Tesla and other EV stocks are grossly overpriced since their likely earnings will never catch up. He doesn’t see the price of EVs coming down much since cost-cutting technology has already reached its limit for the standard EV. It would seem he sees promises of an EV for $25,000 as being empty.
Tesla, for example, is profitable only because it are subsidized by the government. In addition to tax credits, people who buy the cars get, Tesla makes most of its money by selling emissions credits granted to Tesla by the government for making “emissions free” cars to other car companies. Something like $1.5 billion of their revenue in 2019 came from these credits (and ultimately from the sale of other car models) when they reported about $500 million in profits. Without the rent-seeking Tesla would not be making a profit, it would be losing money.
Taxpayers and the car-buying public, in general, are paying a very big bill to keep these EV makers going. (And it’s the same for all the major green industries like wind and solar power.)
The second point Akio Toyoda makes is more fundamental and even more serious. “The more electric vehicles we build the worse carbon dioxide gets,” he said.
EVs don’t do much of anything to actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions. EVs don’t emit carbon dioxide themselves, but ancillary emissions associated with the generation of electricity to power EVs, manufacture EVs, refining of metals for batteries for EVs, and so on, are considerable, leaving aside the issue of large scale destruction of the environment due to battery production. If electricity generation could be shifted more to non-carbon fuel systems then EVs could contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, but solar and wind are not scalable enough or reliable enough to take over that burden*, and nations are fleeing from the only reliable and safe alternative to carbon fuels, nuclear, out of irrational fear. There is no practical alternative to carbon fuel for most electrical power for the foreseeable future.
The more green technology the public is forced or incentivized to buy the lower our prosperity and standard of living will be because this tech is so expensive. If laws are passed, for example, to mandate the purchase of EVs then the base model basic compact car is going to cost the equivalent of $45,000 in today’s money. Many people who currently enjoy the use of a car won’t be able to afford that. Our overall standard of living will drop quite a lot.
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*This is where EV enthusiasts will chime in about future progress in green tech that will solve these problems. However, indications are that all of the green engineering solutions for cars, batteries, solar, and wind are running up against fundamental physical laws that will keep them from becoming much more efficient.
Published in Environment
Big batteries do not work in cold climates. Batteries have a much shorter useful life than an internal-combustion engine and are the majority of the cost of an electric car, so owners would be forced to basically replace the car more often. The US electric grid will simply not support that many electric vehicles, especially if governments force generators to use renewable sources for a higher percentage of power. California already suffering blackouts for a large part of the year-just imagine what will happen to mobility when even a quarter of the cars on the road are electric. What will you charge first? Your car or your phone? In the event of a natural disaster, more people will suffer as their cars become useless and they can’t flee or help others. Long road trips are impossible if you have to charge the car every 200 miles. Rural living where distances between dwellings are long do not support electric vehicles. Etc…
Until the green movement adopts a widespread switch to nuclear power EV cars are simply powered indirectly by fossil fuels. Green energy alternatives like wind and solar will never have the energy density necessarily to power a complete replacement fleet of fossil fueled vehicles unless the efficiency increases dramatically, which is unlikely given the laws of physics at least based on my limited understanding of them.
I am on record here at Ricochet predicting the death of electric cars – back in 2012, I think. I am quite sure that I am right – but it is even more evident that my timing needs a little work.
Cars have become fashion statements for many. For those of us who want value for money (as a Jew, I consider myself something of an expert on the topic), internal combustion remains the way to go as far as the eye can see.
Of course, governments may mandate whatever they want. It is why housing is much more expensive than it need be – and medical care, and electricity…. it would be just another stupid set of laws that limit our freedom.
If anthropogenic global warming is indeed a big hoax, then that’s not an issue.
;-)
By implication it is an issue. It tells us that it costs more for EV’s and there is no underlying benefit to prefer EV’s over fossil fuel powered vehicles.
As I glibly mention else where in Ricochet Thermodynamic is the honey badger of Physic, it cares not how you feel about “green energy”. Every exchange of energy to another, lower form of energy has a cost, you will never get more for less, never break even, and cannot walk away from the exchange.
Science!
Until the greenies adopt the understand on orders of magnitude energy density of Nuclear power, and stop thinking Nuclear power has not evolved since the false hagiography of 1979 China Syndrome (still waiting to hear a body count from south central PA). I consider them to be fundamentally unserious about any notion of CO2 reduction. Unless they are wishing for the entire population of the globe to be force to live in the energy environment we did in the late 1900’s.
Given that our understanding of Thermodynamics has been fix since the Scottish Enlightenment with the works of Watts, Rankine, Thompson (aka Lord Kelvin), and Maxwell. The Germans and Americans had notables as well (Maxwell, Clausius, & Gibbs), I suspect that this is really some Malthusian desire. Given the fundamental innumeracy of how the electrons are available for their iPhone and Mac computers (to say nothing of the power draw for the internet) most lefties I suspect will be on the loosing end of a struggle for how most of us chose to live.
But the Corporate Fascists don’t care about overall prosperity. They only care about themselves and their fellow elites. They also want people dependent on public transportation.
Germany is a leader in “green energy”. Their solar farms and windmill forests have been producing energy at 2% of capacity. That doesn’t count the energy used to heat the windmills. Green energy doesn’t like winter.
All the issues you bring up are features, not bugs, of EVs.
Actually it looks like we are hitting some major breakthroughs in green technology which will drop the cost of these cars over the next ten years significantly. Which is for the better. Including Toyotas own solid state batteries.
This will provide great job opportunities for the little children in Africa who are doing the mining for battery minerals.
This does not negate the basic energy conversion losses with each exchange. You still need a completely different infrastructure to support an electric fleet. It will require more power (which unless you are Nuclear based will be some derivative of fossil fuels) than we current consume for the equivalent movement. We are already at a marginal grid (especially in the Western part where they are already having brown outs) with no one willing to pay for simple maintenance versus substantial growth.
All the left is doing is have us piss away money we do not really have (to their favored kick-backing supporters) for a chimera utopian vision.
Where is John Galt with his motor that runs on static electricity?
Plants live on CO2. Humans emit CO2 all day and night. Just get rid of all the people (environmental wackos first), and you get rid of that anthropogenic climate change.
Toyota EVs (Marai and RAV4 EV) are priced in the $50,000 range right now. If there is information suggesting that this price will come down I’d love to see it.
Bottom line: car makers will be forced by government to build electric cars that the public does not want to buy. Will there be fields full of electric cars? Will governments mandate that citizens buy them?
I bought an all-electric Nissan Leaf about a year ago–and will take my tax credit this year.
For me, the benefit is easier upkeep and a really smooth ride.
I ordered a matched set of custom bumper stickers.
Left: ALL-ELECTRIC VEHICLE
Right: (FUELED BY COAL)
Fact: When the Communist Chinese government discontinued the heavy tax subsidies for purchase of electric cars, sales plummeted in a very short time. Electric vehicles are a creation of government, and cannot stand alone if government does not subsidize sales.
Which works fine for a very limited number of folks, the rub is there is simply no way to provide sufficient clean electricity for everyone to drive electric vehicles without conversion to nuclear. Also the increased demand for transmission and charging stations means massive outlays of scarce capitol further damaging the overall economy. This is a losing proposition in so many ways it is hard to even detail them all, except for a small group that can benefit as long as it remains small.
The way to do this is, let the localities that are interested do compact nuke systems.
From what I can tell, the left is against compact nukes because they will lose a lot of political control. It doesn’t get much press, but big electric utilities are a very leftist / soviet concept that we don’t need anymore. A lot of graft, corruption, and waste.
Big utilities are normally natural monopolies. Monopoly is always bad no matter whether it is government controlled, union controlled, or private sector controlled. Monopolies are seldom innovators and usually oppose innovation.
I read at a long article about this once. It was unbelievable. If the average person knew, they would make it a priority to get rid of those damn things. It’s certainly true in Minnesota.
I just put solar panels on my roof and a fairly large battery system, which I want to thank everyone for subsidizing for me. Even with that system at peak operation, I’ll probably still be getting around a 1/4 to 1/2 of my home electric power from fossil fuel based power generation. The sun doesn’t always shine and batteries can only store so much electricity for later. That having been said the economics of the system for me worked. Funny thing is my neighbor across the street the economics would not have worked because his roof faces north and mine faces south. People who support the green agenda as an article of religious faith don’t take the time to adequately understand the tradeoffs involved.
There are plenty of people who don’t agree that the green agenda is economically viable but if they are savvy investors they can do well as long as the massive government (taxpayer) subsidies are in place. There are those who support the green agenda as long as others pay for the deficits. There is obviously some value in the learning process but as of now nuclear power is the only available option that serves both the greens and the economics without over indulgence in fossil fuel use.
This is 100% true. They talk about it all of the time on real vision.
Not to mention, there’s another ice age coming. There’s no scientific debate about that, so why aren’t we following the science to prepare for it by doing everything we can to heat the planet up?
NRO has a timely article on the green debacle making my Thermodynamic point about if fishes were wishes.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/u-s-offshore-wind-prospects-overblown-promises-and-blown-up-costs
Key little tid bits from the article.
Physics matters….
…. the intrinsic physical properties of those fuels that led to their preferment, properties which can be summed up in a single term: Fossil fuels are of low entropy. They are, in the technical, thermodynamic sense, highly improbable, being dense stocks of energy,
… if the low-carbon candidates to replace those fossil fuels do not have similarly favorable or superior physical properties, no amount of policy support will be able to compensate for the deficiency. Nature cannot be fooled. Reality matters.
It’s kind of striking that climate scientists can, they claim, predict global temperatures for the next 100 years, but nobody has any idea when the next ice age is going to start.
Just going by the historical record, we’re overdue for another ice age.
I agree, Rod, it’s all a farce. And a waste of taxpayer money. The thing that amazes me is why this is still going forward when it takes hours to recharge a battery. What are you supposed to do if you’re driving across the country, wait hours at an electrical station? That alone should kill the thought of electric vehicles.
Works mostly in special and limited circumstances.
I keep thinking it through and I think it’s pretty stupid to force it with government. I don’t see how it’s going to net out. One of our local environmental lobbyist was trying to tell me it was the same thing as rural electrification. lol I don’t think you had to force rural electrification at gunpoint. What idiots.
There is this libertarian Car analyst name Eric Peters. The guy is really smart. He says if the government would just stop forcing it very small and inexpensive ones would become very popular. It would be a bigger deal if they had compact nukes but the left is not going to tolerate that for a variety of reasons.