The idea that all cars in Britain should be fully electric within a
relatively short space of time is so silly and potentially damaging that it
is hard to know where to start criticising it. But let us start with the
most serious flaw; where is the electricity to run them to come from?

The transport sector currently consumes about one third of total energy
demand. Not all of this is due to cars, and electric vehicles can in
principle be more efficient than internal combustion engine vehicles.
However, one estimate suggests that if all Britain’s cars were electric,
electricity production would have to increase by more than one third, from
337 TWh (terawatt hours) a year to 460 TWh. If this were to be supplied by
nuclear power stations this would mean more than 18GW (gigawatts) of new
capacity. Another estimate produced by National Grid suggests we may need
as much as 30GW. Right now we have plans for only one new nuclear power
station, Hinkley C, with a capacity of 3.2GW at a cost of at least £20
billion. So we would be looking at between five and ten more Hinkleys at
£100bn and £200bn.

We could of course put up more wind turbines to generate this electricity.
However, while a nuclear power station can run at 90 per cent of its rated
capacity over the year, wind turbines can only manage about 30 per cent, so
we would need 48GW, requiring 16,000 new wind turbines, another four times
the current number. These would occupy about 19,000 square kilometers,
equivalent to more than a quarter of the area of Scotland. And we would
still need to build matching nuclear, gas or coal fired power stations so
that we didn’t lose most of our transport when the wind didn’t blow for a
few days.

Our electricity supply system is already creaking, with the closure of
coal-fired stations the National Grid has been paying up to £2000 per MWh
in emergency backup from diesel generators, about fifty times the normal
wholesale cost.

It would seem irresponsible to propose increasing electricity demand until
we are sure that current demand can be securely and economically fulfilled.

Then there is the logistics of charging all these cars. To refuel a petrol
or diesel vehicle takes less than five minutes to fill a nearly empty tank.
Filling stations are now being equipped with ‘fast’ chargers for electric
cars. These take about 30 minutes to provide an 80 per cent charge, so we
would be looking at long queues.

If you are able to park off road at home then your domestic supply can do
the job overnight in about eight hours. But what if, like many city
residents, you have to park on the street? It would be possible to install
charge points along city streets, but at a cost since the electricity
network was not designed with this in mind. The cost of upgrading both the
local and national networks is likely to be very significant, and no
estimates seem to have been made of it.

Indeed what will it all cost? An electric car put on the road today enjoys
a straight grant of £4,500 from the taxpayer towards the cost of the car
and the remission of road tax of typically £200 a year over its life.
Instead of excise duty and VAT at £2.63 per gallon plus VAT at 20 per cent,
electricity carries only VAT at five per cent. The annual loss of tax
revenue for a car doing 10,000 miles a year would be nearly £1,000. Over an
expected vehicle lifetime of 14 years taxpayers are generously giving
electric car purchasers more than £18,000. If the same generosity were
extended to the owners of nearly 30 million cars the bill would come to
half a trillion pounds.

Until the issues of power generation, logistics and cost are resolved all
cars being electric looks unachievable and unaffordable.

Professor Jack Ponton FREng, Emeritus Professor of Engineering, Scientific
Alliance Scotland


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1 Comment

Ian Miller · August 9, 2017 at 12:28 pm

People have very little REAL ‘concept’ of what energy is, – far less how much of it we need daily and have every right to take for granted throughout our lives.
Yet though our 21st century standard of living is extremely dependent on it for its very survival, in the UK we are at serious risk like never before of losing it while absolutely trashing our environment with so-called ‘renewables’ at the behest of the Green Movement, who falsely allege they are protecting the environment.

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