Skip to main content
HEAD TREKS: Icing The EV
Some months ago a journalist for a prominent Canadian newspaper published an article in support of battery electric vehicles (EV) as a more environmentally friendly alternative to internal combustion engines (ICE). This blog serves to rebut his thesis.

The journalist’s argument falls flat for a number reasons. Firstly his statement “in an age of global warming” presupposes as yet unproven scientific “fact” rather than opinion, thereby invalidating his underlying argument of the absolute superior morality of the battery electric vehicle over the internal combustion engine. Furthermore, the current diminishment in sunspot activity may actually be signalling the onset of a minor ice age, with future global warming being required to cope therewith; but that remains for another essay.

Secondly, in delineating his operational savings, he fails to take into account the massive government subsidies being thrown at the electric vehicle industry that completely neutralize, if not completely obliterate these “savings.” Lastly, he fails to recognize that electricity is not a natural element but must be generated.

Using the most recent data from the International Energy Agency, it can be noted that in 2014, world electrical generation was sourced 40% from coal, 21.6% from natural gas, 10.6% from nuclear reactors, 16.4% from hydro, 4.3% from oil and 6.3% from solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and waste. While these percentages may change over time, they are unlikely to materially do so over the 20 -25 year targeted times espoused by a number of governments for change from ICE to EV.

Ergo, and devoid of many other practicalities tied to the envisaged change, notably the millions of new charging stations required to service the forecast two billion vehicles by that time, the planet must await the invention of a truly efficient and ICE comparable battery. It can be argued that the world’s largest scientific failure has been the failure to invent and develop on a commercial scale such a battery. That over the time-framed “on the road to Damascus” this is likely to happen is conjectural while in the meantime, misplaced government ideologies continue the nearly bankrupting level of subsidies required to “compete” with ever cleaner internal combustion engines.

As a competitor offering the absolute same convenience and efficiency as the internal combustion engine, the lithium ion battery is a joke; and with its explosive tendencies, sometimes a dangerous one. Furthermore, like oil and gas, electricity must be stored for future use, and there is yet to be invented a battery of practical application in that regard.

Whether oil, gas, etc. is put directly into car engines or to produce the energy required to power electric vehicles, therefore becomes an exercise in a tight circle of contradiction, if not farce; which of course is the strength of Gorism, Suzukism, Muskism et al.


Copyright © 2018 Ian de W. Semple

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN: QUESTIONS I CANNOT PRESENTLY ANSWER - Whether Canada’s increasing “nanny state” governance will serve to retard the future efficient use of individual brain cells? - Whether it will ever be understood that leaders make, often many, mistakes on the road to accomplishment, but that those who never attempt such will never make mistakes…………..or achieve anything? - Whether the long standing and scientifically recognized rhythms of El Niño and La Niña weather cycles will be treated as normal cycles of climate change or impediments to the ideologies of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? - Whether September 2017 Irma hurricane’s death toll of less than 100 represents a significant improvement over the 9,000 deaths in the Galveston, Texas  hurricane in 1900, 2,500 deaths in the 1928 Florida hurricane, 1,200 deaths in the 2005 Katrina hurricane, or just more dramatic media reporting that implied that Irma exerted the greatest toll………EVER!? -
Post a Comment
Read more
“BUT I DIGRESS“  consists of  “HEAD TREKS”  that represent the conversion of random thoughts, sometimes in the form of  “QUICK TREKS” , observations, philosophies and rants into a form of modern cursive expression better known as computer keyboarding. From time to time these thoughts are also summarized under the heading  “IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN: QUESTIONS I CANNOT PRESENTLY ANSWER.” IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN: QUESTIONS I CANNOT PRESENTLY ANSWER -Whether today’s celebrity worship is an ongoing mental illness or merely a fad that will at some point, if not suffer a deserved demise, then at least, be blessed with the curative medicine of a society of higher intelligence? -Whether in temperate climates the normal passage from spring to summer to autumn to winter and back to spring again will be viewed as an historical pattern of climate change or alternatively, a barrier to the ideologies of many climate “scientists”? -Whether I will ever be able to comprehend how a judicially
Post a Comment
Read more

HEAD TREKS: A Reflection On Addition & Subtraction

A Reflection On Addition & Subtraction It is October 23, 2017 and today a couple became first time parents and with that some friends of ours grandparents. Today also however, a friend of ours became a widow. Today a child is born and a friend lost. Today at birth, a new life is created on the same day that death extinguishes a full other one. Today there is joy on the one hand and grief on the other. Today a new heart beats while a mature one is silenced. Such are the competing factions of happiness and sorrow. Such are the emotional struggles when they must be simultaneous. Such are the components of addition and subtraction that define the realities of life cycles. Such are the ingredients of reflection. Copyright © 2017 Ian de W. Semple
Post a Comment
Read more