Ever since electric cars started to go more mainstream there has been a desperate attempt by the internal combustion engine car producers to knockdown the green credentials of these cars.
The idea that in some way a petrol or diesel car would emit less carbon than electric one, is an idea that is patently absurd for anyone with half a brain.
However this is exactly what a German study tried to suggest. A new study has debunked this and demonstrated once and for all that a Tesla model 3 is 65% more efficient than a Mercedes C-Class.
Studies in the past have done all sorts of strange things to try to make the numbers work. In one study they counted the emissions that the electric car produced during manufacturing but not the combustion engine car, in another they took the green is possible petrol and diesel (ignoring the emissions of transporting the fuel insistently) and the most dirty electricity going.
The new study discovered various assumptions being made in previous papers that are clearly utterly false. For instance the earlier studies had assumed a far shorter battery life span than actually occurred. Another serious error with the previous studies was the amount of carbon they calculated it took to create the battery. This is indeed a reasonably carbon intensive activity, however it is nowhere near as carbon-intensive as they had assumed.
As has been shown in previous studies, even the dirtiest source for electricity generation was significantly cleaner than using fossil fuels (comfortably under half).vElectric cars need roughly one-quarter of the energy to move the same distance as fossil fuel cars, furthermore the grid is rapidly greening, so the numbers only swing more heavily in electric car direction as time goes on.
This of course also ignores the fact that many people who buy electric cars then purchase solar panels and batteries so they can essentially run them for free. This change can never occur with fossil fuel cars, as they have to emit fumes to run: that’s how they work.
Initial studies assumed that lifespan of of electric car batteries was 150,000 km. Already this is not the case with the number being close to 250,000 km. And this is without the rapid advances that have been made at the moment-how far will this number swing in electric cars direction after we hear the advances that Tesla and others are making at the moment.
Tests show, that after 500000 km only 20% of the battery capacity has been lost. While this may be a problem with hybrids and early electric cars, many of the the leading cars these days including all Tesla long-range models have a starting range of over 300 miles. Indeed the standard range models still have a range of over 200 miles, meaning with a loss of 20% you’re still talking about a car with over 150 miles of range on a charge.
Many German automakers are still resistant to electric cars. Indeed Audi is still investing heavily, in improving the combustion engines efficiency. However has the electric car rapidly reduces to similar prices of the combustion engine car, and the charge reduce it becomes more and more odd there’s any of these companies would think that their customers wish to pay 50 or 60 pounds a week to drive, when they could pay between 5 and 10 pounds to charge up there electric car instead.
The fight of vested interests to save the combustion engine seems odd. It is quite clear that the world does not have a carbon budget for us to continue to drive these sort of cars. Granted many of these people do not believe in global warming, or indeed that humans caused it-however as with gravity a lack of belief does not change the facts. Someone who does not believe in gravity and walks off a cliff, will still fall to the bottom.
Whether you like a combustion engine, or you have made a fortune from selling is, it must become a thing of the past-and for the benefit of the planet and the people who live here, the sooner the better