I recently met online with a bunch of anti-Tesla advocates who were happy to list out all of the reasons why electric cars are a bad idea. After an hour of listening to the rants, I realized that all of their complaints were based on myths or outdated information, or simply a yearning for the old days.
Here are the three most common myths that should be debunked:
Myth #1: Electric cars get power from dirty power plants
Most electricity comes from fossil fuel power plants. But here is something you should know: even the oldest coal power plants are less polluting and more efficient than gasoline or diesel engines. In fact, they are more than twice as efficient.
The average well-tuned internal combustion engines is about 25% efficient at converting fuel to mechanical energy. You can add a turbo to squeeze out a couple more percentage points, but even the latest super-efficient engines can’t push that number past about 28%.
Power plants have an unfair advantage– they don’t have to be mobile, so the size and weight of the machine inside doesn’t matter. They can use giant multistage turbines that extract every bit of energy out of every drop of fuel. And they’re not doing this because they care about the environment– they do this because it makes them more profitable.
Most older power plants still operating today are more than 60% efficient from fuel to electricity. Modern plants can push that beyond 80% efficiency. Therefore, by switching to an electric car, you’re immediately cutting your energy consumption by more than half.
Myth #2: Battery manufacturing causes more environmental damage.
Here’s the concern with battery manufacturing: (1) mining companies extract ore from the mine, (2) the ore is processed and refined into metals, and (3) the metals are used to make batteries. This process consumes energy and makes a lot of pollution.
But where does gasoline come from? (1) oil companies drill and extract crude oil, (2) the oil is transported to refineries where it is cooked and processed into a lot of things including gasoline, (3) the gasoline is transported to gasoline stations where it ends up in the tank of your car. This process also consumes energy and makes a lot of pollution. It turns out that it’s a lot of energy, too. Fun fact: the energy consumed to produce one gallon of gasoline will drive a Tesla 20 miles. Keep in mind that 250 billion gallons of gasoline were refined in 2010 alone.
With both processes consuming energy and polluting, there are a couple of differences that are important to understand:
- There are more than 2 million operating petroleum wells worldwide, but there are fewer than 100 lithium mines. There is much more opportunity for direct environmental damage from petroleum exploration than lithium exploration.
- Gasoline engines need constant refilling with endless tanks of gasoline, but a set of batteries is manufactured once for each car. Batteries are then recycled into new batteries at end of life, but we get to breathe all of the gasoline exhaust.
Verdict: gasoline is the bigger problem.
Myth #3: The power industry pollutes as much as cars.
No it doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter: the amount of pollution isn’t the problem.
Power plants have the benefit of being stationary. This means technology can be installed on power plants to capture all of the exhaust and prevent them from polluting at all, like all of these power plants are doing.
This can’t be done with cars. Cars pollute wherever the car happens to be: whether it’s near a school, hospital or nursing home, or anywhere else. This is causing a huge street-level pollution problem which is having an increasingly more dangerous impact on public health.
This is why the trend is clear: make all cars electric, and make all power plants non-polluting.
Is everything going the way of electric?
There will always be gasoline-powered cars. People aren’t going to give up their classic sports cars, or their grandpa’s Cadillac. No electric car is going to produce the sound of a big-block spinning past 8000 RPM with tuned headers and straight-out exhaust. Long live the gearheads with their projects propped up on jack stands. (I’m one of them.)
But the only path forward that solves the pollution problem is to do away with polluting internal combustion engines for regular daily use. The future is going to be full of silent, efficient, and environmentally-friendly electric cars.