The poor efficiency of these is something that people are more than willing to sweep under the rug so that they can enjoy unencumbered virtue signalling.
Gwyn Morgan writes at the Toronto, CA The Globe and Mail and schools a Tesla driver:
Why electric cars are not as ‘green’ as they may seem
On a recent trip to Hawaii, we were surprised when the car service sent a beautiful Tesla Model S to pick us up at the airport. As we drove to our accommodations, the driver waxed enthusiastically about how proud he was to be driving a “zero-emissions” vehicle. This prompted me to ask him a series of questions, starting with what powers the car? When he replied “electricity,” I asked how that electricity was generated. Looking up at the windmills spinning on the ridges above us, he said, “Those windmills, I guess.”
I informed him that Hawaii’s 100-plus windmills generate only 5 per cent of the state’s power. The other 95 per cent comes from carbon-emissions-intensive, diesel-fueled power plants. Then I gave him a short physics lesson explaining the scientific axiom that, each time an energy source is changed to another form, an “efficiency loss” occurs.
The largest loss comes when the diesel is burned in the power plant and the electricity is sent to Tesla’s charging station. Once the car is plugged in, the next efficiency loss occurs when the battery charger converts the AC electricity to chemical energy stored in the battery. The final efficiency loss occurs when that chemical energy is converted to DC power and delivered to the electric motors driving the wheels.
Combined, these efficiency losses consume some 75 per cent of the energy originally contained in the diesel fuel, leaving just 25 per cent to power the Tesla.
There was a lot more at the article but The Globe and Mail uses a paywall - I will no longer willingly visit their site and their advertisers will no longer receive page-views from me.
Leave a comment