Policy-makers often use science, or perhaps more accurately “science” as dishonest justification for the policies they want to inflict for ideological motives. Climate change is perhaps the most glaring example, though the handling of the Wuhan virus runs a close second. Most government experts allow their political biases to slant their application of science in their advice and recommendations, and few elected officials comprehend science and relevant research sufficiently to make competent policy consistent with the nuances of the scientific matters involved.
Let’s look at electric vehicles, for example, which are currently being encouraged by tax credits.
Ashley Nunes, Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program fellow, has pointed out that a gas guzzler may, in some circumstance, actually be better for the environment than an electric vehicle. When did you hear anyone in the Biden administration admit that?
Nunes found that many owners of electric vehicles (EVs for short), usually wealthy Americans who take advantage of federal tax credits to purchase one as a second car, are harming the environmental because they aren’t driving enough.
Manufacturers of electric cars need lithium, and finding and mining lithium takes a lot of energy, with more still required to make a functional car battery out of it. Creating a clean-burning EV battery creates twice as much greenhouse gases as making an internal combustion engine.
Because, as Nunes explains, “an electric car is almost always cleaner to drive per mile compared to a gasoline-powered one, you can burn off the emissions associated with manufacturing the car.” Still, it takes 28,069 miles of driving, or about 2.73 years, for the EV to overcome its initial polluting disadvantage to gain a “green lead” on a gas-powered car with its low per-mile emissions. Paradoxically, you need to get people to drive more in order to get an emissions advantage…and all of the climate change propaganda is aimed at getting Americans to drive less. And since EV purchasers tend to be wealthier people who use them as a second cars, it takes about a decade for the electric cars to produce any emissions benefit. How many wealthy household hold on to a car of any kind for ten years?
Thus, Nunes has concluded, some people are “better off driving a gas-powered car if they care about the environment.” EV owners tend to sell the vehicle before it’s reached the green break-even point in miles.
But wait—there’s more. Nunes’ research indicates that people who own both gas and electric-powered vehicles choose to drive the gas-powered one most of the time. It is the people who buy EVs secondhand, the poorer households that drive them for many miles and years as their primary vehicle, who achieve the emissions reductions that electric vehicles are supposed to provide. But government subsidies miss this group entirely! The federal government tax credit of up to $7,500 only accrues to those who purchase new electric vehicles. Even with some states like California offering additional rebates on top of that, new electric vehicles often cost more than the average American earns in a year.
“If you’re a poor American and all you can afford is a $10,000 car, this rebate isn’t going to matter to you,” Nunes concludes. “And by and large, we find that, guess what, the person buying a $120,000 [electric vehicle] would have still gone out and bought the car without a $7,500 subsidy.”
Policymakers’ EV hype is self-defeating, and doesn’t “follow the science,” because the politicians have a shallow understanding, to the extent that they have any at all, of al the relevant factors.
The policies are wasteful and ineffective, no matter how smug and certain the climate-change scolds are about them. The electrical car advocates are assuming expertise and scientific justifications they simply don’t have.
It’s incompetence seasoned with dishonesty, abusing science rather than using it properly.
Ethics Alarms 
It’s worse than that, Jack. It’s rent seeking.
I admire Elon Musk for a lot of things, but we can never forget that he wouldn’t be a bazillionaire were it not for government subsidies and contracts.
It isn’t just electric cars. Years ago, I had a really interesting contract with a group of fishing boat owners. They pursued low-price, high-volume fish that mostly got used as lobster bait, animal feed and the like. This isn’t Deadiest Catch as a fishery, where they’re out after nasty-looking creatures that fetch big bucks because they taste great. These particular species are higher on the food chain than crab, but not much higher.
This fishery was targeted by a number of different deep-pockets – including some of the nation’s largest robber-baron foundations and groups like Conservation Law Foundation and Environmental Defense Fund (who get a lot of support from the same foundations). The foundations also funded activist academics who ended up in senior positions in the Obama and Biden administrations. They developed cozy ties with the usual suspect in the progressive media (which means most of it).
These groups – and foundations – were basically trying to drive these fisheries out of business. It’s painfully obvious as to why. Here along the New England coast, those species – and others – can only be caught where the government is now supporting the development of wind farms.
I’m about as far from being a conspiracy theorist as you can get. But looking at the players involved and the timeline involved, it’s painfully obvious.
This is rent-seeking, and the best rent-seekers are willing to play the long game.
I’m at “ground zero” for the land grab taking place in the name of green energy. I could actually go on for a long time about the issues involved and have in my previous posts, not that anyone cares but here’s a macro economic conundrum, real world food vs energy debate. I have been asked to put a solar farm on our real farm. They desire to use the most productive land we have. If this were to happen we would have to fire our employee, our local economy would not have as much to farm, therefore small businesses would suffer because this is happening with thousands of acres and You, dear consumer, will have less food to consume thanks to solar panels… the economics is there for the individual owner. Indeed, there’s no reason to grow food if you could do solar. Never mind the corn and soy going to biofuels or the 18 acres per mile for new transmission lines or the 9 acres per wind turbine. So my “big picture question” how many food acres can we lose for green energy? They’re adding 95 turbines (x9 acres per turbine) 855 acres plus the lines and roads in one wind farm in the next year, 650 miles of lines (x18 acres per mile) and I do not know how many acres for solar… one company that is talking to me wants 40,000 acres for solar here where I live. Another wind farm says they’ve locked in 100,000 acres to develop. That’s just here… where I live. In 3 counties. The economics is sound. No one I know thinks this will help the planet, not really, and it’s putting man made structures where before it was range land and farm ground, nearly pristine in spots. I’m worried about MY environment. Not CO2 emissions. My actual local environment. Of course, it’s no where you’ll ever be and not very pretty, so we won’t bother with that… after all, who cares? There’s only 6000 people here, in the entire county. Less than 12,000 in the three counties combined. The lithium mined mostly by China is just a small part of the green energy environmental impact I’m skeptical about. The stats last time I checked stated that each farmer feeds about 150 people. There are roughly 1 million farmers left in the US. Now the larger ones are leasing land for energy. Pareto principle applies. The 20% that’s giving you 80% of your food are also the 20% the wind and solar companies are asking for large swathes of land.
They’re taking farmland out of production to grow … tax credits? Brilliant.
It gets even more I interesting if you consider these clean energy mandates and the resulting wind turbines and lines being built on state lands.
I bought a 2018 Tesla S, used, in 2019…so no subsidy. Despite the pandemic, we have already passed the “break-even” point referenced in the study. We have made multiple long-distance trips with it and love it. It is our ICE car, 2003 BMW Z4, that we use as a second car driving mostly on top-down outings during beautiful weekends. As I suspect most readers know— or should know — there are many studies comparing electric to ICE, including (in some) integrating the source of the electric generation, coal being the worst, of course. All are generally consistent with the one cited here. Bottom line: if you are driving an electric car for your main ride and will keep it for more than 2-3 years (as we do with all cars we have ever owned), electric is better for the environment in terms of greenhouse gas. Eventual Disposition of defunct batteries is another story, one that has not been adequately studied … but several companies are working quite hard on recycling them. We’ll see. Bottom line, sub 1: not all electric cars are expensive and purchased only by wealthy people. Find a good Nissan or Chevy or (several others) and the price is quite favorably comparable to ICE cars. Or (as I did) find a used one in good shape….admittedly not so easy in the last couple of years. So, let’s consider the full story and the panoply of life cycle studies that have been accomplished. For most people, if they can afford an electric car (and remember, not all of them are expensive luxury models) and they drive it as their main drive, it has a positive impact.
“Still, it takes 28,069 miles of driving, or about 2.73 years…”
Wow, I’m retired and don’t drive much. I picked up my current car on 06/12/2018 and it has 14873.3 miles right now. If I had an EV I’d still have a little over 4 years to go to be green.
And you might think I’m making this up but we just went for a walk in the neighborhood and someone down the street has a Tesla charging in the driveway with portable solar panels. They also have a charging cable hanging on the garage light as they always charge the car outside. There have been warnings issued not to charge the cars overnight in the garage. I’m not sure if that was with Teslas but Chevy Bolt sent out a bulletin / recall for owners not to charge the vehicles in the garage overnight (back in 2021).
Source: https://electrek.co/2021/07/14/gm-chevy-bolt-ev-owners-not-charge-overnight-park-inside-garages-fires/
Personally, I don’t care if EVs are green or not green. If I have 1/4 tank of gas I have a very good idea how far I can still drive versus if I have a 25% battery left in an EV I have no idea how far that will go. If you use the heater, radio, etc., then you are using up the battery. So, 25% battery in an EV depends on many variables. I’d start to feel uncomfortable driving when my battery charge got below, say, 33%. That’s another thing – the range given on EVs is usually listed for near ideal conditions. If you live in the north, you’re not getting those ranges in the winter.
The 7,500 dollar tax credit doesn’t apply to all EVs. Here is a table from an article published 8/16/2022. Some vehicles have reached the “sales cap” (not sure this table will display correctly).
Model Year
Vehicle
Note
2022
Audi Q5
PHEV model only
2022
BMW 3-series Plug-in
330e
2022
BMW X5
xDrive45e
2022
Chevrolet Bolt EUV
Manufacturer sales cap met
2022
Chevrolet Bolt EV
Manufacturer sales cap met
2022
Chrysler Pacifica PHEV
Pacifica Hybrid (PHEV) only
2022
Ford Escape PHEV
PHEV model only
2022
Ford F Series
F-150 Lightning only
2022
Ford Mustang MACH E
2022
Ford Transit Van
E-Transit only
2022
GMC Hummer Pickup
Manufacturer sales cap met
2022
GMC Hummer SUV
Manufacturer sales cap met
2022
Jeep Grand Cherokee PHEV
PHEV model only
2022
Jeep Wrangler PHEV
4xe (PHEV) only
2022
Lincoln Aviator PHEV
Plug-In Hybrid model only
2022
Lincoln Corsair Plug-in
Plug-In Hybrid model only
2022
Lucid Air
Reserve here
2022
Nissan Leaf
2022
Rivian EDV
Fleet-only
2022
Rivian R1S
Reserve here
2022
Rivian R1T
Reserve here
2022
Tesla Model 3
Manufacturer sales cap met
2022
Tesla Model S
Manufacturer sales cap met
2022
Tesla Model X
Manufacturer sales cap met
2022
Tesla Model Y
Manufacturer sales cap met
2022
Volvo S60
T8 Recharge (PHEV) only
2023
BMW 3-series Plug-In
330e
2023
Bolt EV
Manufacturer sales cap met
2023
Cadillac Lyriq
Manufacturer sales cap met
2023
Mercedes EQS SUV
2023
Nissan Leaf
It seems to me the “Green” label is being abused on technology products in the same manner as the “Healthy” label on food items was / is abused.
“and all of the climate change propaganda is aimed at getting Americans to drive less.”
Didn’t know whether to openly guffaw…or curl into a fetal.
Remember, these electric cars are being powered by coal and natural gas in most places. Only about 20% of our electricity comes from renewables. We lose about 50% of our electricity in the transmission lines. Those extra miles they talk about are only to recover the environmental cost of producing the car, not running it.
I don’t think I could get a Tesla (even if I could afford it). The home charger is 75,000 W. My area was electrified in the 1920’s. My powerlines are barely supporting a 100 A service to each house in my neighborhood. A 700 A extra service would require extra wires for some distance to deliver that power (that would roughly double he electricity demand on my block when in use for 1 car).
Now, my state is ~35% wind. Do you know how much land is required for wind? I drove by one of the wind farms some months ago and measured it with my car’s odometer. It was 40 miles x 50 miles. That’s 2000 square miles of land for electricity that doesn’t equal 1 coal fired plant. Now, this was all sparse grazing land with high, steady winds. It works well. Try to do that in Rhode Island.
I’m anti-green weanie and very anti-subsidy… but let’s not spew bullshit. You’re doing that strong here.
The only accurate number you give.
This one is debated by environmentalists. Many of them are calling hydro not renewable, making “renewable” as they define it 12.2%. Include hydro and indeed it is 20%. It isn’t as much coal as people think as coal has declined massively to 22%, replaced mostly by natural gas, now at 38%.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php
I’ll take your fake facts in order:
Take away the zero and you’re correct.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Energy%20Information%20Administration,States%20in%202016%20through%202020.
75kW is a level 3 fast charger. That’s the ones that resemble a gas pump. No one has those at home. Level 3 chargers powered by 480V three phase power.
The highest possible with a level 2 charger is 80A, but Tesla doesn’t do that. The highest from Tesla is 48A or 11.5kW. You always have the option of going lower. Many only put in 30A chargers. You can set to charge overnight when you’re not using your stove and / or dryer.
Where do you come up with 700A? The 75kW number? 75kW at 240V is 312A. But no one runs a level 3 charger on 240V single phase. If you think you need to charge your Tesla in 20 minutes, you’re going to need a 480V three phase service. Otherwise overnight works just fine.
Well,
http://insideenergy.org/2015/11/06/lost-in-transmission-how-much-electricity-disappears-between-a-power-plant-and-your-plug/
Say 69% loss
You are right, the Tesla site says 11 KW now. I looked a few weeks ago and the car linked to a 75 kW charger with a ridiculous installation price to install. I wondered how people could do that.
My house has a 100 A, at 110 V service. I need to double that even for the smaller charger for 1 car.
One start-up company I’m trying to keep an eye on is the Edison Motors who are attempting to create a trucking platform. The idea behind it is that it is mostly electric but the electricity is hybrid generated from an onboard diesel generator. Honestly, I haven’t done any proper research on it yet, so if anyone wants to take over the thread here with any knowledge they have on this start-up, chime in!
Diesel over electric? Hasn’t that been the motive design of railroad engines since the ’50s? Isn’t that the motive design for heavy mining machinery? It’s great for minimizing wear and tear on drive trains, but how does diesel over electric reduce emissions? My objection to EVs is the apparent belief that they use electricity that comes out of a wire which magically makes the electricity carbon free! Presto change-o!
If you want transportation to become more energy efficient, it need to become more energy efficient, not just using a different energy. Sorry, you aren’t going to ‘save the planet’ by driving a 9000 lb electric Hummer (not an exaggeration) to crush people when you crash into a subcompact. To make transport more efficient, it needs to be lighter. Dragging a 5000 lb vehicle around so your 200 lb self can go get 30 lbs of groceries is insane. We need lighter weight vehicles for everyday commuting and errands. The typical Tesla model S weighs the same as my Jeep Grand Cherokee at 4500 lbs. My first car was a Chrysler K-car that weighed 2400 lbs. This is not improving. Note that the lightweight, efficient, electric autocars are NOT eligible for tax breaks, but you can get one on the 9000lb Hummer.
To increase efficiency, you need to
(1) lower weight
(2) improve aerodynamics (speed dependent)
(3) reduce friction (better bearings, lubricants, etc)
To further improve efficiencies, towns need to stop having so may stoplights. My town has installed 4 stoplights in a 1/2 mile stretch of the busiest road. They need to have 1 stoplight and a road infrastructure within the store area behind the road to reduce the congestion and needless idling.
The fact that no one is working on this is pretty good evidence that NONE of this electric vehicle nonsense is actually meant to improve the environment. It is meant to harm the consumer and reduce freedom of movement for the poor.
Some good news on the “Science!” front: St. Anthony of Fauci is going to start getting his lavish pension this December! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11134889/Biden-confirms-Fauci-LEAVE-December.html Hooray! I doubt he’ll shut up. He’ll probably get a show on CNN or MSNBC, but it can’t be worse.
I had a busy weekend, so when I came back to EA and read this article, it caused my head to hurt. I’m compiling a couple of quick thoughts and then I have to get back to the paperwork nightmare I ignored all weekend in pursuit of other, less fun, goals.
First, anyone who says “follow the science” has forgotten what science means. Science is a process that states a method for determining the most likely reason for something. Science requires us to observe a phenomenon, hypothesize about the phenomenon, posit a fair test of the hypothesis, complete the test several times with the same inputs, and compare the results of the tests with the observed phenomenon. The better correlated the test with reality, the better the hypothesis and the more likely it is to be true. Conversely, if you cannot replicate your test or your test or your test does not correlate well with reality, it is either time to scrap the test or the hypothesis. Anthropogenic climate change is not science by the centuries old definition. The tests are mostly unable to be replicated, and the results have been proven false, time and again. To follow the science, it is time to scrap that hypothesis and move on.
Second, I was amazed to see such low requirements for electric cars to validate their “green” existence. Most studies I have read on this subject put the threshold far closer to 100,000 miles before even coming close. The best I have seen before this one puts us nearer to 75,000 miles than 25,000 miles.
Third, this study only deals with the formulation of the battery. If one considers where we are getting the energy, and as other commenters have noted, solar and wind are not nearly so clean as you would like to think. Heck, think of all the chemicals that need to go into making those panels, even though they cannot give us power 24/7/365 like burning fossil fuels. Life cycle analyses on electric cars, considering batteries, electricity, grid concerns, etc tend to push them to obscene mileage, well above expected battery life. In this instance, they are not unlike windmills, with an expected 30 year life and a 37-52 year payback period, sans government intervention.
Fourth, no one bothers, when discussing electric vehicle, to discuss the basic laws of thermodynamics. These laws are just like the laws of gravity, not caring whether or not you like them. They don’t care what is fair. They don’t care what is socially acceptable. They don’t care if they inconvenience some more than others, because if you are too stupid to get on the wrong side of these laws, you will pay the price. So, thermodynamics state that whenever one transforms matter to energy, or energy to another type of energy, or energy to matter, that there will be a loss in total energy. To take a simple example, we get most electricity by burning coal. The rock is in the ground. We have to spend energy to get it out of the ground and pulverized. Now we’ll start into some of the math. Coal is burned. The gas is used to make steam, the steam is used to turn a turbine that makes electricity. The gas is cleaned. This process has a maximum theoretical efficiency of around 45%. Most of the power plants run at about 33% because theoretical efficiency is not anywhere close to real world possiblity. So for every 100 units of energy the coal gives off, you get 33%.
Let’s now get some minor math happening for electric cars. I’m going to skip the big equations and use easily available numbers from reputable sites. For this exercise, we are going to assume that preparing coal for electric generation uses the same amount of energy as preparing gasoline for car consumption, as gasoline and coal are equivalent primary sources, but electricity is not a primary energy source unless you are hooking up your power lines to silk kites. Now, a car that gets gasoline loses 64-75% on inefficiencies and powering auxiliaries. So a car that was given 100 units of power from gasoline gets 25 units of power when all is said and done, with the WORST assumptions on gasoline cars. For an electric car, I’m going to use the MOST FAVORABLE numbers. Now, an electric car that starts with 100 units of power from coal loses 33% to electric generation, 5% on electric transmission, 89% for charging, and 88% on inefficiencies. (It is assumed by the DOE sources I found that heating and cooling, as well as any auxiliary power usages on an electric motor are not consuming enough power to mean anything, so they are ignored, even though the electricity drain on the battery for those devices has been shown in other studies to be significant.) The electric car, through that math, gives us, in the BEST case scenario, 23.7 units of power. So the best case theoretical scenario of an electric car under performs the worst case scenario of the gasoline powered car.
Fifth, and this is a major problem that no one discusses and people like me keep getting told to shut up. Lithium batteries need cobalt for stability. Nobody really likes batteries that routinely go boom. (I’ll grant Bolts the assumption that we emphasize freak occurrences.) Cobalt mines are worse than any Nike sweatshop ever was on children. Sure, we could mine cobalt humanely, for a huge increase in cost that would take even the cheapest lithium battery out of the average American price range, but we don’t. Are we just ignoring the high human cost here, or can we maim and murder children in far off countries so long as we avoid a completely unproven and damn nearly disproven future climate catastrophe that defies all current data? If we are looking to improve the world for our future, how about not killing that future off? Yes, we want cobalt, yes, we need cobalt. Without these child-killing cobalt mines, our society as we know it would probably come to a screeching halt, EVs or no. However, if we are wanting to expand on EVs, we need more cobalt than ever. If we want to pretend these cars are good for anything, we need to ignore the kids we kill for every car. This does not sound like an environmentally friendly option.
Sixth, what about all these minerals we need for windmills, batteries, solar panels, etc. I once saw a survey that suggested that if we did what our GND folks want, we would totally strip the planet of certain minerals, and still not come close to realizing demand. Yes, many of these minerals are plentiful, but we are talking about 1,000-10,000-100,000 fold increases in mining for some of these minerals. Also, in dealing with resources, we can talk all we want about resource availability, but this comes down to the fossil fuel talk of resources and reserves. In technical terms, a resource is what we can find. A reserve is what we can economically and practically retrieve. Many of the assumptions in the mineral needed for this EV revolution require magical thinking to get resources and reserves to be the same value. Unicorn farts anyone?
Finally, we have the other problems with electric cars. They have battery usage at 300 miles per charge, and a charge time of at least 30 minutes, though depending on if you have the exact right connection for this particular vehicle, you may have upwards of four hours. Remember that most numbers for electric cars are for the 80% charge. The last 20% takes the longest and is most inefficient, so we just don’t talk about that. A good battery really has 300 miles per charge and takes 30 minutes to get to 80%. So you should count out 20% of that mileage or say that it has 270 miles per charge. The studies on these vehicles have shown that the 300 mile/charge is about 100-150 when the temperature drops to below 32F or there is significant wind, etc. In addition, charging stations are not all that common, so if I’m on the BFE stretch that is I-80 Wyoming and I’m low on charge, I’m screwed, as compared to gasoline. You will destroy middle America. I have many more stops. I also can get someone to siphon a gallon of gas, or haul me to the next station where I can buy a gallon of gas, to get my dead car from the side of the road. I’m not sure how you are carrying that 100W of electricity. And to top all of this off, we have the long term issues of the power grid. The power grid cannot handle a large quantity of electric cars. There have been requests in many municipalities that electric car owners not plug their cars in until off-peak hours due to brown out issues. These cars pull wattage on a more drastic scale than any other common home appliance. When calculating house electrical usage, one of the biggest factors for any home is whether or not there is an EV. This can cause the entire electrical system to have significant reliability, and even health and safety issues, depending on the age of the local grid.
Electrical cars have not one damn thing to do with following science, and even suggesting that we follow science is stupid. The data that is available shows that while EVs can help ameliorate some gasoline costs, they are not good for humanity or the environment in their current configuration. I have plenty of other thoughts, but I have spent way too much time on this and need to get back to work.
Excellent fact-filled comment, which will be added to my archives, Sarah.
I assume the BFE stretch to which you refer would be an obscure location somewhere in rural Egypt…?
BFE does generally refer to an obscure location in rural Egypt, but in this case I mean an obscure location in rural Wyoming. BFW usually gets misunderstood. Miles and Miles of Bloody Wyoming (MMBW) is another phrase that works. We also call many of these stretches “are you lost” or “do you have enough gas?”
Sarah,
Wow!!!! I was so hoping you would add insights to this. I’ll have to read this three or four times to absorb it, but the process will be worth it.
I would say your response is COTD-worthy.
Well done!!!