Why All-Electric Cars Are Simply a Con-Job

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

(UPDATED AT THE END)

The April-June 2024 issue of Green Energy Times alleges on its front page, “Although hybrids burn less gas than a conventional car, they don’t offer a pathway to eliminating carbon pollution from vehicles. Battery-electric vehicles, on the other hand, do.” That’s not merely false, it is rabidly false: battery-electric vehicles don’t, at all, “eliminate [or even reduce] carbon pollution” and are possibly even worse from a global-warming perspective than are the other types of vehicles.

Here are the relevant data on this, up to 2017 in the United States, from

https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-the-us-generates-electricity/

How the US generates electricity

10 October 2017

Coal, which dominated and was soaring until 2007, then plunged two-thirds, down to only one-third of its 2007 number, by 2017. During that same 10-year period, gas-fired electrical-power plants exactly doubled. The rest of coal’s decline went into wind and solar, which soared starting in 2015 and then doubled that number in 2016, but then stagnated in 2017, so that by 2017, gas was 55% of all U.S. electricity, wind and solar were 23%, and nuclear was 18%. Here that 2017 situation is graphed in the same article:

No updates on those numbers are yet available to the public.

Moreover: The promoters of “natural gas versus petroleum” allege that “Natural gas produces less pollution and greenhouse gases than its counterparts, according to the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas. For example, when natural gas is burned, it produces 45 percent less carbon dioxide than coal, 30 percent less than oil and 15 percent less than wood.” But actually, natural gas is mainly not CO2 but methane (a different carbon gas), and methane has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. Even though CO2 has a longer-lasting effect, methane sets the pace for warming in the near term. MIT’s Climate Portal calls methane simply “a more potent greenhouse gas” than CO2 (carbon dioxide). To say that “Natural gas produces less pollution and greenhouse gases than its counterparts” is a lie to promote the gas industry.

Clearly, then, it is very false, extremely deceptive, to allege that all-electric vehicles “eliminate carbon pollution from vehicles.“ All-electric vehicles are, instead, only for the stupids for whom “out of sight is out of mind,” because that carbon pollution is merely being transferred from your car’s exhaust-pipe to the distant electric-power plant’s effluent-stack. Furthermore: in order for that energy to get from the electrical-power plant to your automobile’s battery, there is loss (in the form of heat, heating up the surrounding atmosphere even more) along the transmission-lines etc., as a consequence of which, all-electric or “EV” cars are probably the most-polluting of all types, and way more polluting than are hybrids (which don’t rely upon those electrical transmission lines at all). And, then, of course, batteries (which are used both in EVs and in hybrids) are yet an additional strain upon the planet’s resources. (But, probably, hybrids are even better, all-around, than are non-hybrid and non-EV, vehicles, because a hybrid really does greatly reduce fuel-consumption.)

Whereas the billionaires who are heavily invested in fossil fuels and related corporations hire agents to deceive the public that global warming is a hoax or even good, the billionaires who are heavily invested in non-fossil energies and related corporations (such as electric-power companies) hire agents to deceive the public to buy all-electric vehicles, etc.

But the reality is that both groups of billionaires are playing the public for suckers, and neither group of billionaires cares very much about what the truth is for protection of the planet, and for the distant future. In a totally libertarian world, our descendants are not necessarily to be the beneficiaries of the present generation, who have no obligation to anything but ourselves — future generations constitute no market for the people who are living today — and this ‘free market’ is, in the U.S.-and-allied countries, part of what it means to be a ‘democracy’ (even if it’s not really true).

I argued in my “You want to know how to stop global warming? Here is how:”, that the billionaires and their think tanks, foundations, ‘non-profits’, and ‘charities’, who pump the “clean carbon” line, ignore totally the only possibly feasible way to halt global warming, because it would upset all billionaires’ apple-carts.

So, the only information that reaches the general public about these matters are merely gaming the public, not informing them truthfully about the issue. Any intelligent individual will recognize this and distrust and investigate on one’s own, anything one reads or hears about such matters (including this — and nobody has paid me to write this).

UPDATE: An editor called to my attention the energy-wastage in an internal-combustion engine being far higher than in an all-electrical engine; and so I replied:

What you say is roughly (approximately) confirmed by the U.S. Government

https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv.shtml

which is selling electrical cars, but their site likewise ignores that some of the advantages that EVs have

https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv-ev.shtml

such as regenerative braking, exist also on hybrids

https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv-hev.shtml

which aren’t subject to any of the enormous energy-loss from a distant methane-burning electrical-power plant and energy losses along the transmisssion from there to the car.

Since the billionaires’ contending propagandists respectively for the fossil-fuels industries, and for EVs that are heavily dependent upon fossil-fuels that are processed and burnt far away, aren’t presenting an argument, but only propaganda, I am guessing that hybrids are not only far better than EVs but are also somewhat better than regular gasoline-powered vehicles are. I assume that because at least Toyota’s hybrids get such synergism between the battery and the braking-system, and the internal-combustion engine, so that the total system seems to me to be more comprehensively and totally efficient than either a traditional car or an EV one can be.

The fact that the EV propagandists (such as the ‘environmentalist’ that I quoted at the start of my artiicle fantasizing that “Battery-electric vehicles, on the other hand, do …  eliminate carbon pollution from vehicles”) hide, instead of discuss the fuel-wastage at the electical power plant and along the transmission grid, I am guessing that hybrids will be the way of the future.

Furthermore, hybrids, unlike EVs, aren’t including any of the enormous energy-wastage at the electical-power plant:

There are two different types of natural gas power plants — simple cycle and combined cycle. A simple cycle natural gas power plant efficiency rate tends to be the lower, ranging from 33% to 43%. On the other hand, a combined cycle power plant’s efficiency can reach upwards of 60% because it captures and uses the plant’s hot exhaust gases to spin a secondary turbine, which generates more electricity. The result is that less energy is lost in the conversion process. …

When it comes to non-traditional power sources, wind power plants are between 35% and 47% efficient. Thanks to significant technological advancements in recent years, efficiency of solar power plants now range between 18% and 25%, and that number is expected to continue to climb.

So, EV producers and their propagandists haven’t presented any case for buying their vehicles. They’ve presented only part of what might be an argument for buying their products, and that part includes false allegations; so, a reasonable assumption would be that they just don’t have an argument, but only propaganda, to sell their products.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.