ELECTRIC VEHICLES & REALITY

The current Labour government have decided that we will all drive electric vehicles.

How will they make that become reality? The first step in that process is to ban the import of ICE’s (Internal Combustion Engine vehicles) which is being suggested will happen from the year 2040. Some vehicle manufacturers are planning to cease production of ICE’s by the year 2035 in line with international governmental recommendations from many countries around the globe.

A Canadian engineer recently ran the numbers involved in the switchover to electric vehicles and concluded that in order to match the 2000 cars that a typical gas station can service in a busy 12 hours, the gas station would require 600, 50-watt chargers at an estimated cost of $24 million and a supply of 30 megawatts of power from the grid which would be enough to power 20,000 homes. Unlike home recharging stations, these would be operating at peak usage hours where the rates are the highest. Basically, new grids will need to be built at the cost of billions. Can you spell brownout and blackout?

No one likely thinks about the fact that it can take between 30 minutes and 8 hours to recharge a vehicle, depending on it being empty or just topping off. They will need lounge areas, holding areas for vehicles completed but waiting for owners to return from shopping or dining.

There is no question that electric vehicles have some positive attributes, low refuelling costs, no air pollutants at the point of use, and quiet operation, but are they actually clean and green as their marketing insists. They have no tailpipes, as we know, on the car, but immense exhausts miles away. Aren’t they really coal or natural gas cars? They are certainly not wind and solar cars.

The government of the United Kingdom is already starting to plan for power shortages caused by the charging of thousands of EVs. Starting in June 2022, the government will restrict the time of day that people can charge their EV battery. To do this, they will employ smart meters that are programmed to automatically switch off EV charging in peak times to avoid potential blackouts.

In particular, the latest UK chargers will be pre-set to not function during 9-hours of peak loads, from 8 am to 11 am (3-hours), and 4 pm to 10 pm (6-hours). Unbelievably, the UK technology decides when and if an EV can be charged and even allows EV batteries to be drained into the UK grid if required.

Imagine charging your car all night only to discover in the morning that your battery is flat since the government took the power back.

Delusional Government Thinking To achieve the governments emissions reductions targets, by the end of this decade more than 50% of monthly vehicle sales in New Zealand need to be EV’s. This requires a jump from about 6000 EV’s (bought in 2020) to annual sales of 150,000 electric vehicles (NZTA).

The government has stated that currently NZ with our huge numbers of used imports has become a dumping ground for ICE vehicles and EV’s will stop that happening. Many comments have been made about the cost to buy EV’s and our government has stated that this will not be a problem and that the prices will come down as more of them are imported particularly used EV’s. Surely this will create the same issue with EV’s where we become a dumping ground for used imports of EV’s.

The average used EV will need a new battery before an owner can sell it, pricing them well above used internal combustion engine cars. The average age of a car on the road is about 12 years. A 12-year-old EV will be on its third battery. A replacement battery typically costs anywhere from $10,000 to over $20,000 so there will not be many 12-year-old EVs on the road. Good luck trying to sell your used green fairy tale electric car!

Given the known fact that the batteries in EV’s have a finite life time; [i.e. most new EVs have battery warranties that guarantee the battery for a certain length of time (typically 5-8 years, sometimes longer) or distance (such as 100,000km)], we have to realise that used imports will come with a reduced life time and when this is taken into account along with the costs for replacement batteries, we are going to have a serious problem with end of life EV’s. This will then become an increasingly major problem as not only are we stuck with un-useable vehicles but those same vehicles contain a toxic waste with their batteries, and these batteries cannot currently be recycled.

So we have gone from a dumping ground for ICE vehicles (which can largely be recycled) to a dumping ground for EV’s which have the added extra factor of toxic batteries that cannot be recycled.

It certainly seems like delusional thinking to me and even more so when we take into account; the fact that EV’s still require coal or natural generated electricity a lot of the time.

A home charging system for an EV requires a 75-amp service. On most suburban streets the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single EV. For half the homes on your block to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly overloaded.

Currently there are approximately seven million vehicles on the roads of New Zealand and if that whole fleet is to be exchanged for EV’s where are we going to get the electricity from to keep them charged, and how are we going to ensure that there is an adequate supply of both electricity and charging points across the nation to support the use of EV’s.

In times of low hydro lake levels we currently face possible power cuts/rolling blackouts, yet with the changeover completely to EV’s this will become a reality not just a possibility and we will also face the failure of our transport systems for the same reason (no power supply).

The electric automobile will always be around and the automobile manufacturers are investing in their output although I believe they will be disappointed in their sales figures, however, for as long as the present government is in power, they will be pushing the electric cars. Delusional thinking at best; Insanity at worst!