[Quietcars] The shocking truth about electric cars

[Mary Ellen]

Although this article doesn't deal with the quietness of electric cars, it
does deal with the likelihood (or lack of likelihood) that they will be the
transportation of the near future.  It's slightly off topic, but I believe
still has relevance because it deals with the potential magnitude of our
problem.
 
 
 



The shocking truth about electric cars



MARGARET WENTE
Globe and Mail, Sep. 1, 2011 

Wouldn't you love to have an electric car? They're clean, green and
righteous. And
once we make the switch, we can pull the plug on fossil fuels, air
pollution, imported
oil and Middle Eastern autocrats, and create millions of green jobs into the
bargain.


No wonder progressive governments are so eager to plow money into electric
cars.


This week, Ontario's McGuinty government (which likes to brag that Ontario
is Canada's
greenest province) showered Magna International with nearly $50-million to
develop
new electric vehicle technologies. Magna, which is rolling in dough, admits
it doesn't
need the money. But in a world where capital and jobs are mobile, such
gratuities
are expected.


Dalton McGuinty is a true believer in electric cars. He hopes that, by 2020,
5 per
cent of the vehicles on Ontario's roads will be electric. That's why he's
also plowing
money into charging stations and battery technologies.


There's just one problem. The fantasy that electric cars are right around
the corner
doesn't survive even the most cursory reality check. As Dennis DesRosiers, a
leading
auto consultant, points out, consumers simply won't pay a $20,000 premium
for a vehicle
that doesn't go very far, isn't very convenient, and runs out of juice as
soon as
you turn on the air conditioner.


Consider hybrids. After a decade on the market, they've captured only 3 per
cent of sales. To get to Mr. McGuinty's 2020 target, green-minded Ontarians
would have to buy at least 100,000 electric cars a year every year, starting
right now. Total U.S. sales of electric vehicles are about 10,000 a year.



Of course, electric cars aren't in mass production yet. And the technology
is bound to get better and cheaper. Right?


Not so fast, says the University of Manitoba's Vaclav Smil, who's among the
world's
foremost scholars of energy economics. Electric cars, he says, aren't
microchips,
and Moore's law doesn't apply. "The myth that the future belongs to electric
vehicles
is one of the original misconceptions," he writes in his book Energy Myths
and Realities



. In an interview, he notes that recent history is filled with energy
breakthroughs that turned out be duds. Electric car crazes have come and
gone before. Perhaps some people may remember a Canadian company called
Ballard, which claimed to have developed a breakthrough fuel-cell
technology. Many brainy people swore that Ballard was the future. It wasn't.


Here's another catch: Electric cars aren't necessarily green at all.
Electric vehicles
require large amounts of electricity - so much that Toronto Hydro chief
Anthony Haines
says he doesn't know how he'd get it. "If you connect about 10 per cent of
the homes on any given street with an electric car, the electricity system
fails," he said recently. And if the extra electricity isn't generated by
renewable energy, then overall carbon
dioxide emissions will go up, not down, Prof. Smil says. "The only way
electric cars
could reduce global carbon emissions would be if all the additional
electricity needed
to power them came from carbon-free energies." He also makes the essential
point that the world's energy infrastructure is based on fossil fuels.
Changing that
will take decades.


Please don't blame me for this splash of cold water. Blame the greens, whose
grasp
of basic consumer behaviour, energy economics and political realities are
shockingly
inadequate. The facts Prof. Smil sets out exist independently of global
warming, which, he believes, is a well-established reality. But just because
the facts are
unwelcome doesn't make them untrue. Time and time again, the greens have
harmed their cause with their uninformed fervour and simplistic thinking.


As for cutting down on fossil-fuel consumption, the future is both bright
and dim.
The good news is, improved technologies have brought much better fuel
efficiency - 50 or 60 miles per gallon - well within our reach. Stricter
standards would
quickly pay off big. For that matter, so would persuading businesses to let
workers telecommute
twice a week - a change that would cut more fossil-fuel use than millions of
electric
cars.


The bad news is, the worldwide number of cars is set to double. And not even
Mr. McGuinty can change that.

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