Why Electric Cars Are Bad for the Planet

Vernon Coleman





We are constantly being told that electric cars are going to save the planet and that the big car manufacturers are going to have to stop making diesel or petrol driven cars and just build electric cars.

It won’t be long before we are forced to buy and drive the damned things either because there isn’t any alternative or because we will be punished so severely if we dare disobey?

But I wonder if the fans of electric cars realise that some petrol fuelled cars have been proved to be `greener’ than electric cars? Some electric cars actually have higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than petrol driven vehicles.

I wonder how many know that that electric cars are among the most unreliable of all vehicles on our roads. The lack of reliability is surprising since electric cars have far fewer moving parts than cars with internal combustion engines.

How many enthusiasts realise that the fact that electric cars are silent will mean that there will doubtless be a good many accidents involving pedestrians.

The fact is that electric cars have been around for 100 years and they shouldn’t have a future (unless we are all forced to buy them) because if you look at them logically they are a terrible idea.

The main problem is that electric cars won’t save the planet from anything. Making electric cars (and the batteries they need) requires vast amounts of energy – far more than is needed to produce a non-electric car.

And the electricity which electric cars use when they are running is taken from the 20% of our energy supply which is provided by electricity. Moreover, despite all the subsidies which have been introduced we still obtain 75% of our electricity from oil, gas, coal and nuclear power. So, three quarters of the electricity which keeps electric cars on the roads comes from oil, gas, coal and nuclear power.

It was recently announced with much fanfare that Britain now obtains more electricity from renewables than from fossil fuels. But most of the electricity from `renewables’ comes from something called biomass.

As an aside, wind and solar power probably provide nearly enough electricity to power the computers and phones of climate change protestors – which use massive amounts of electricity. Solar and wind farms produce a pitiful amount of electricity. We import more electricity from France and Belgium than is generated by British wind farms.

So, what is biomass?

`Biomass’ is another word for `wood’ - the stuff you get from chopping down trees. It is perfectly possible that some of the children who are hysterical about climate change, particularly those who have spent a good deal of time away from school, don’t realise that wood comes from trees.

And the trees which give us wood (aka biomass) are the same trees which we are told we must plant to save the planet.

The European Union and the British Government want to stop us using log burning stoves and open fireplaces. But at the same time they are shovelling tons of trees into power station burners. And where does all this biomass come from?

Most of it in the form of wood pellets and it is imported from America.

They bring it over in ships.

Ships which don’t run on solar power or wind power – but diesel. We also burn some of our own waste – the stuff from those carefully sorted and washed recycling boxes.

This is more than lunacy. It’s fraud.

Biomass can be dirtier in terms of carbon emissions than coal.

The biomass enthusiasts are, presumably, the same idiots who thought biofuels were a good idea – not realising that burning food condemns millions to starve.

Still, it is, I suppose, now possible for the Climate Change Mythmakers (CCMs) to claim that electric cars are using electricity which grows on trees – rather than relying on the burning of diesel or coal.

Despite all these simple truths Britain and France have announced their intentions to ban the sale of all petrol and diesel cars. India wants all cars to be electric by 2030. And China has announced its intention to phase out the sale of all petrol and diesel powered cars.

The increasing demand for rare earths (used in the manufacture of batteries for electric cars) means that the cost of producing and running electric cars will soar. The environmental cost associated with sourcing rare earths will also soar. It costs more to produce and run a standard electric car than it costs to produce and run many petrol and diesel vehicles. Electric cars have been proven to be worse for the environment than petrol or diesel cars.

Worse still, there is now growing enthusiasm for forcing train companies to run only electric trains rather than trains which run on diesel or, heaven forbid, on coal. Where do these people think all the electricity is going to come from?

It isn’t difficult to see why the sales of electric cars are doing so well and why all car companies are now desperate to join in the rush to produce them.

There are massive, unjustified and unjustifiable financial incentives for those who buy electric cars (just as there were once for those buying diesel cars). Electric cars are exempt from vehicle excise duty and congestion charges and there are Government subsidies for some vehicles and for setting up a charging station near to your home (if you don’t have a garage or an off street parking space). The charging stations will block the traffic and lead to extra pollution but no one seems to care about that. The electricity used to charge up cars is sold at a reduced VAT rate. There are numerous other perks.

Electric cars are called `zero emission vehicles’ but that is only true if you don’t count all the pollution created by the burning of coal and diesel to make the electricity in the first place. The fact is that electric cars are worse for the environment than diesel fuelled cars. Electric car enthusiasts forget or ignore the inconvenient fact that you cannot make electric cars without coal because coal is an essential ingredient in the steel making process. You could, I suppose, make cars out of plastic but they would not satisfy safety requirements and plastic is made from oil.

The Greens who support their promotion are smug and sanctimonious and equipped with world class hypocrisy. With their absurd policy of `less work and more benefits’ the Greens take advantage of the gullible and the naïve. They are politically crafty but economically illiterate and an enormous threat to our civilisation.

In California, where far too much weed is smoked, it has been decided that 50% of all ride sharing vehicles must have zero emissions by 2025. The only thing I can say with certainty is that if this goes ahead then a lot of people in California will have to relearn how to ride bicycles or rely on roller skates.

But the scam has spread everywhere and even the big oil companies are investing in electric cars and self-driving cars. This is a waste of time, energy and money. Neither will ever come into being – especially in the UK. (I say this knowing perfectly well how easy it is to look silly by sneering at scientific inventions).

So, for example, when there are millions of electric cars being charged at home every evening there will not be enough electricity left for heating, cooking and lighting our homes, businesses and emergency services. As cars are plugged in every evening so hospitals will close and factories will shut. All this so that sanctimonious hypocrites can drive around in electric cars.

Amazingly, it gets worse.

Electrical supply systems will have to be rebuilt to cope with the extra demand. The cost to us all will be phenomenal. Our household electricity circuits will have to be reorganised too – more expense and more expenditure of energy. Goldman Sachs, almost certainly the most loathsome bank on the planet, has estimated that we will have to spend $6,000,000,000,000 on power generating facilities and grids in order to provide electricity for all the electric cars the Greens insist we must have within the next decade at most.

People make one big mistake about electric cars.

They assume that the electricity they require is obtained by magic or from windmills or solar panels. It isn’t, of course. Most of the electricity used to run cars is made from coal or oil.

But there is more.

I hate to have to tell you this but electric cars have been proven to be inefficient, wasteful and unreliable. They require huge amounts of material and energy to build. And they require huge amounts of electricity (which will still be largely produced from fossil fuels by 2050) in order to operate.

Although you would never know this if you obtained all your information from your government or the newspapers it manipulates, electric cars require more oil than cars with traditional engines.

The people who use electric cars are selfish cheapskates who are damaging the environment – and their fellow citizens – so that they can save money and appear self-righteous.

Apart from the obvious question (where do they think the electricity comes from?) electric car batteries require lithium, cobalt and other rare earths which require massive mining investment and much despoliation of the earth.

Digging up the metals for the batteries uses up vast amounts of energy – and does irreparable damage to the planet.

It has been proven beyond doubt that electric cars use up more energy than ordinary cars – and are, consequently, worse for the planet.

But despite the evidence greens and quasi would be liberals force governments to encourage the building of electric cars and governments encourage people to buy the damned things by making the taxes on them much lower than on petrol or diesel vehicles.

Here’s another problem no one talks about.

In a few years’ time we will have to deal with all the dead batteries taken from the electric cars on our roads.

The cars sold in 2017 will produce 250,000 metric tons of battery pack waste.

Still, I have no doubt that the Greens have got a plan to send it all to China to be buried.

I expect the fans of electric cars will enthusiastically use their thumbs on the disapproval button on my video, using up some diesel sourced electricity as they do so.

But not liking the truth doesn’t change it or make it go away.

Copyright Vernon Coleman June 2020

Vernon Coleman’s book A Bigger Problem than Climate Change is available as a paperback and an eBook on Amazon.





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