Your Tesla Burns Coal

Children often think they become invisible when they close their eyes. Unfortunately this remains true for most adults dealing with much more serious problems.

Take electric vehicles (EVs). The common wisdom is they are "green". And their owners consider themselves contributing to the greener planet and conscious of the global warming problem. This is so hypocritical. 

Just because a car is electric does not mean it is clean or environmentally friendly. Where does this electricity come from? Well, most likely, from a dirty coal-burning, global-warming power plant. This is the reality today. Many people just don't want to see/hear it, closing their eyes while trying to believe electricity comes from a socket in a wall. And not from a fossil power plant. But the fact is fossil fuel production is set to soar over the next decade. And EVs are significantly contributing to that.

The key problem here is not really if the car is electric or hybrid or combustion. The problem is how much of the (still dirty) energy it consumes to move you around. And this trend is just terrible. A typical car today weighs 2 tons and this is this mass the users / drivers move roaming around. Accelerate / brake, thousands of times a day. Incredibly inefficient.

Earlier this year I called the Citroën AMI "the most innovative development in the automotive industry". Precisely because weighing 495kg it sheds 75% of the bulk mass of a typical 2021 car, contributing to the same level of energy savings. Or even more, as it has just a 6kW motor, compared to some 600kW "alternatives". The weight / power also contributes to a much smaller battery, as you simply move around only 25% of the mass. And batteries are evil. The evil the EV owners are also closing their eyes on. But that could be a separate blog.