Anti-EV article “Got this from my buddy Mark Reed”

[Dardedar]

Anti-EV article “Got this from my buddy Mark Reed...”

1) “I have been troubled for a longtime by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid,”

No, it doesn’t. I’ve been charging with home solar for years. I have 5 friends with EVs, 4 of them charge with home solar.
"…many drivers can put solar panels on their roof to power their electric cars. In fact, CleanTechnica research has found 28–42% of electric car drivers have rooftop solar, and another newer report of ours pinned it down to 32%."
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/el ... ions-myth/?
Regardless, in the US the grid is now 20% renewable, the EU is 38% and the grid gets cleaner every day. Some places, like British Columbia, are above 90% renewable.

2) “IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX”

Gas taxes only pay half the cost of building and maintaining roads, the rest gets cost shifted on to everyone else. We don’t have to keep burning some 70 million barrels of oil per day to pay for roads. We can find a smarter way to do that. General taxes.

3) “Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed.”

Let’s do that now.
If you buy your electricity to charge your EV it works out to less than 85 cents per gallon equivalent.
A gallon of gas holds the energy equivalent of 33.7 kwh.
American car/truck fleet average is 25 mpg. So that gallon will take you about 25 miles on average. Currently about $4
My electric car gets 5 miles per kwh.
So that same 33 kwh, one gallon equivalent, because of the inherent efficiency of electric motors, takes me 165 miles.
That’s an increase in efficiency of 6.6x.
That 33 kWh costs me nothing because I have free excess home solar.
To buy it would cost me about $4
To drive 165 miles.
To do that with gas is currently $26.40.
That's 8x better than gas, in price.

4) “Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things,”

Quite the opposite. That’s those gas burners. An electric motor is about 92% efficient, gas engines are about 25%. EVs also recapture energy from forward motion with regenerative brakes. The new ones use heat pumps for cabin climate. Electric is vastly more efficient and cheaper, and it’s not even close.

5) “At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro Executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.”
British Columbia is about 90% renewable, so the renewable thing is going very well there, as in the rest of the world. Observe:
“In 2020 renewable energy accounted for 90% of new electricity generation. In the next five years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects renewable sources to overtake fossil fuels as the world’s dominant form of electricity generation.”
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/conten ... nd-future/?

6) “a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service.”

You can charge a Tesla with a 110 wall outlet that typically has a 20 amp breaker. My friend does it all the time. A dryer outlet, typically 50 amp, will add 160 miles of range to any EV overnight for about $3. US average daily commute is 31 miles.
40 years ago most home were built with 100 amp service.
20 years ago most were built with 150 amp service.
Today it’s closer to 200 - 250amp service.
This reveals how outdated and false these claims are.

7) “For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.”

If you can run a dryer you can charge an EV. In reality:
Electricity use in the US is flat since 2007 and down for the last decade. We know how to make more.
A lot comes from efficiency. My 11 watt LED bulbs do what used to take a 100 watt bulb.
Per capita residential electricity sales in the U.S. have fallen since 2010
“Following sustained growth through 2010, U.S. residential electricity sales have declined in both absolute and per capita terms. …energy efficiency improvements and economic factors have contributed to the decline in per capita residential electricity sales since 2010. Residential electricity sales per household declined even more than the absolute or per capita declines, decreasing 9% between 2010 and 2016.”

US Electricity use flat since 2007
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38572

US electricity usage, 2020 same as 2005.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/201 ... ince-1975/

No, EVs Aren’t Going To Overload Electric Grids
“In reality, EVs only use ¼ to ⅓ the energy of a comparable gas-powered vehicle. Why? Because most of the energy of fossil fuels ends up as heat. …
All in all, around 90% of an EV’s energy actually gets used to move the vehicle instead of getting turned into useless and problematic heat. So, no, changing a gas car out for an EV doesn’t mean that the equivalent energy must come from a power plant. Far less overall energy is needed.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/10/30/no ... ric-grids/?

8) “Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load.”

Some upgrades will be required and are being planned for now.
Myth buster: Electric vehicles will overload the power grid?
ELECTRIC VEHICLE GRID IMPACT
Fact: If 80% of all passenger cars become electric, this would lead to a total increase of 10-15% in electricity consumption.
So far, the market entry of EVs has been very predictable and the electric grid is constantly being developed in parallel. Current EV market trends show low to moderate energy uptake rates.”
https://www.virta.global/blog/myth-bust ... power-grid?

Electricity Grids Can Handle Electric Vehicles Easily – They Just Need Proper Management
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorri ... anagement/?

9) “we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive new windmills and solar cells,”

Wind and solar make the cheapest power ever invented, by a lot. And they’ve had price declines by 85% in ten years. I’ll give 4 examples.
a) “This transition has been sped by plummeting costs —Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that solar and wind are the cheapest source for 91 percent of the world’s electricity…”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-my ... d-debunked?

b) Renewables were the world’s cheapest source of energy in 2020
--This is fuelling the rise of renewables as the world’s cheapest source of energy.
--The cost of large-scale solar projects has plunged 85% in a decade.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/ ... gy-source/?

c) Australia finally wakes up to solar opportunity – “world’s cheapest clean electricity”
“the Australian government is now aiming for a solar cost of $15/MWh, around one third off the current price… a two-pronged approach to achieving what it describes as a 30-30-30 target – achieving 30 per cent module efficiency and a cost of 30 cents per installed watt by 2030.”
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australia-f ... ectricity/?

d) 'Coal is on the way out': study finds fossil fuel now pricier than solar or wind
Around 75% of coal production is more expensive than renewables, with industry out-competed on cost by 2025
Around three-quarters of US coal production is now more expensive than solar and wind energy in providing electricity to American households, according to a new study.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ergy-study?

10) we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system!”

Good. The grid is long overdue for an upgrade. Some of it, that catches fire on occasion (see California), is 100 years old.

11) “Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors”

This again reveals how out dated the material is. The Volt, an early plugin hybrid from 2011, discontinued 3 years ago, was made when lithium batteries were 9x more expensive to build than today. The 35 mile range could easily cover about 80% of a persons driving, giving them an equivalent of about 200 miles per gallon, plus electricity.

12) Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery.”

Eric’s lying or Eric didn’t pay attention in math class. If the car goes 25 on electric, it’s not going to use a gallon of gas to drive that extra 5 miles.
Eric’s also lying about the range. The early Volt got 35 miles of EV range, the second Volt got 53 miles of EV range.
My plugin hybrid has 25 miles of EV range. This covers 82% of my driving and gives me an effective MPG of over 200 miles per gallon, plus electricity. But remember, that electricity is used 5x more efficiently than gas, and it’s vastly cheaper.

13) “the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.”

Eric’s lying again. The first Volt (2011-2015) had an EPA rated range of 380 miles. The second generation had a range of 420 miles.

14) “It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours.”

This is where the author of the article reveals they are so clueless they don’t know that the Volt is a plugin hybrid. You don’t have to stop and charge it. You could choose to never charge it and just drive it in gas mode.

15) “the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery.”

With a 110 outlet. A dryer outlet will do it in 4 hours. But again, you don’t have to charge a Volt. If you do, then you get the benefits and lower cost.

16) “The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned,”

Our local electricity is 10 cents per kWh. So it would cost me $1.60 to charge that Volt, (if I bought my electricity).

17) I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh.”

Sure you do. The US average retail rate per kWh is $.14 cents. You’re off by a factor of 8 times.
At .14 cents per kWh it would cost $2.24 to charge that Volt, which then takes you 35 miles.
In reality, the Volt probably only lets you access about 12 kWh of that battery. So more like $1.68 to charge it up, and drive 35 miles.

18) “The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs $46,000 plus.”

Actually, the median US new vehicle cost is $46,000.
The Nissan Leaf starts at $28,000 (before rebates).
GM and Honda are collaborating to develop affordable electric vehicles that cost less than $30,000
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/05/gm-and- ... icles.html?

And now: 2023 Chevy Bolt Is Now Nation’s Cheapest EV at $26,595
https://www.thedrive.com/news/2023-chev ... base-price?

19) simply pay twice as much for a car,
Wrong.

“that costs more than seven times as much to run,”

Wrong. “Electric cars are now three to six times cheaper to drive in the US as gas prices rise”
https://electrek.co/2022/03/22/electric ... as-prices/?

“and takes three times longer to drive across the country.”

Also wrong. Here’s an EV that drove across the country and spent two and a half hours charging.

A Record-Breaking EV
“…the Porsche Taycan broke the Guinness World Record for the shortest amount of time taken to charge an EV on a cross-country trip — taking only 2 hours, 26 minutes, and 48 seconds.”
https://www.hotcars.com/porsche-taycan- ... ntry-trip/

[Dardedar]

A good chunk of the claims in this article came from a screed written back in 2012. Snopes rebutted it back then.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chevy-revolt/