Debunking EV Propaganda

I understand why people buy into all the propaganda against EVs—it connects to things they already believe and people like to have their beliefs reinforced. They pretty much hate having them contradicted. What I don’t understand is how the propaganda is so persistent. Most of it isn’t even slightly logical—it doesn’t even require a deep dive into the data to make it fall apart. I’m not going to explain the engineering behind the debunking, that would make this post TLDR: Too long, didn’t read. Here are some quick answers that you can expand with internet searching if you choose.

The grid won’t support all these EV’s

Actually, in short order, the grid will be more reliable, useful, and less wasteful because of EVs. Roughly 67 percent of the electricity generated in the USA is lost or wasted on the grid. Fifty percent of that loss is recoverable. EV charging is both schedule-able to off-peak hours, and can be shed, and can reduce losses from other factors like phase unbalance. Beyond that, EV’s and batteries developed for EVs enable power generation and storage to be more reliable than the grid for use at the point of generation. Generation at the point of use eliminates even the unrecoverable transmission loss of the grid.

EV’s are powered by coal plants

Totally goofy. Of course whatever powers the grid powers EVs. You can’t change everything at once. From 2014 to 2018 the use of all fossil fuels for ALL energy use declined from 81.6% to 80.2% Solar and Wind increased by 122% and 46% respectively. No new coal plants are being built in the USA, and most of the existing construction projects have been canceled. Coal plants are being decommissioned at the highest rate in the last 100 years. Not because everyone became acolytes of Greta Thunberg but simply because it’s uneconomic. Natural gas plants are much cheaper and faster to build and operate, and wind generation is proving to be an effective alternative. A lot more change is coming, but no matter how much you might like huge infrastructure changes to happen overnight, they don’t. Claiming EV’s do not offer environmental and sustainability benefits because today coal plants still exist is just as stupid as it sounds.

The energy content of gasoline is many times greater than a battery.

Internal combustion engines (ICE) are at most 40 percent efficient, and really more like 20%. Electric motors are about 95% efficient at converting power to motion. ICE engines mostly generate heat, moving down the road is more of a byproduct. And that means when they move down the road they have to shove a huge flat radiator in front of them, dramatically increasing drag and costing power. The reason electric cars offer 150 miles per gallon equivalent is simply that they are far more efficient. When you waste 80 percent of the energy content of waste heat and drag, what does the greater energy content buy you?

EV’s pollute more than ICE when you consider everything that goes into making them.

This is simply a lie. Propagandists trot out the mess of the worst Lithium mines, ignoring the staggering environmental damage of extracting, transporting, and using fossil fuels. Every component of an EV battery is recyclable—available like a super-concentrated ore at the end of life. Nothing useful remains after burning the thousands of gallons of fuel an ICE uses in its lifetime. For the same reason that more than 95% of lead-acid battery components are recycled, probably close to 100% of lithium batteries will be recycled. Recycling needs an economical quantity available. Currently, vehicle batteries have too long a life and get reused too much for there to be a logistically efficient recycling program. But huge recycling plants are in construction.

There’s more nonsense of course. The stakes in the energy business are immense. Fuel for transportation in the USA alone is a $200 billion/year business—that’s for a country that constitutes less than 4 percent of the world’s population. Spending a few billion per year to delay the adoption of EVs is a trivial expense. If I were profiting at that level from delaying EV’s I’d be spreading lies like mad about it. I don’t assume these folks are substantially more moral than I am.