The Future May Not be Quite Ready for Electric Cars
Life would certainly be simpler and easier if theories always worked the way we wanted them to. Unfortunately some little detail that we hadn’t thought of, or chose to ignore, will almost always force change to the application, sometimes fatally. So it is perhaps with the Electric Car.
For years we have been subject to a blizzard of hype from all sides, from nearly every environmental group, up to and including the President of the United States touting the Electric car as the savior of our planet and economy. What I’ve yet to hear fom any of these pundits is the serious consequences of too many people going to Eletric cars.
I’ve done a pretty thourough search and information about the batteries is sketchy at best. What I have discovered is that the batteries will last 7-10 years, replacement cost average about 8000, and no one is talking about how and where to dispose of the spent batteries. Nor is there easy to find information about the impact to our energy grid if several million cars are all plugged in at the same time, each requiring around 14Kwh to recharge.Something else to consider is that 49 of all electricity is supplied from coal. Do we really want to burn more coal so we can drive a silent car?
Part of the solution is to increase solar and wind energy at the residential level. The huge solar and wind farms are only as good as the grid, which is not in good shape, but if we all had a way to generate at least some electricity at home to offset the additional use our Electric Car will extract, it could help a lot. As far as the cost and disposition of the batteries, that will have to be solved by someone with more expertise than I can offer.