Coal Fueled Teslas

Several countries are making proclamations that state all new cars shall be electric by a certain date. Who decided on electric cars? I know they sound ‘clean’ but where does that electricity come from?
About 30.4% of electricity in the United States is generated from coal. About 19.7% is generated from nuclear. So over 50% of the US power is from coal and nuclear. The remaining is as follows: natural gas = 34%, hydro = 6.5%, wind = 5.6%, biomass = 1.5%, solar = <1% plus other misc. sources.
While there are more engineers alive today than all during history there are several problems with electric cars that have to be overcome. Of course everyone knows that batteries are a problem. They are heavy, do not hold enough charge for long trips, are expensive and they are a problem to dispose of at the end of their service life. The electric motors themselves require rare earth magnets for high efficiency. You can induce an electric field without them but the efficiency suffers. Most rare earth magnets are mined in China.
One very big problem with mandating that all cars be electric is the grid. If everyone charged their cars at home at night the existing grid would not be large enough to handle the additional load. Not only would we have to burn more coal or build more nuclear power generating plants, we would have to upgrade the existing electrical distribution system (the grid) to service all the additional electric load that the EVs would require. Most older home electrical services would also have to be upgraded as well.

This post was published at GoldSeek on Wednesday, 11 October 2017.