In President Biden’s vision of a green future, half of all new cars sold in 2030 will be electric. But something really basic is standing in the way of that plan: enough outlets to plug in all those cars and trucks.
The country has tens of thousands of public charging stations — the electric car equivalent of gas pumps — with about 110,000 chargers. But energy and auto experts say that number needs to be at least five to 10 times as big to achieve the president’s goal. Building that many will cost tens of billions of dollars, far more than the $7.5 billion that lawmakers have set aside in the infrastructure bill.
Private investors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into building chargers, but the business suffers from a chicken-and-egg problem: Sales of electric cars are not growing fast enough to make charging profitable. It could be years before most charging companies break even, let alone mint big profits like Exxon Mobil and Chevron.
Fast chargers — ones that can fill up an electric car battery in 20 to 40 minutes — cost tens of thousands of dollars but are […]
This push to electrify the transportation system without regard to environmental costs is appalling when one considers the damages caused by current technology. Yes the individual vehicles are zero emissions but what about the power generation required and lots easier in a disaster to find gas than electricity ask those recovering from Ida.
Petrol tech is well understood and we$$ established and will not disappear within our lifetimes. Yet the new tech based on lithium batteries of differing designs is creating additional damage to the environment. Just saw an investment prediction that says there is a “red hot battery market” which will over the next 10 years require 20x the lithium mined now.
Question we need to ask is it worth it? Will the EVs, while beneficial in the long-term, change the course of climate change now “baked in”? My reading of the “data” is hell no with the emphasis on the hell though there are some theories that say with the decline of ocean currents we could flip us into an ice age. My real point we can’t predict with precision what will happen except to say climate instability is here to stay.
It takes hundreds of years for carbon to naturally decrease in the atmosphere and though methane breaks down much faster it is many times better at trapping heat. We are in for some very major changes that no numbers of EVs will save us from. Instead of directing most of our resources towards the new tech to offset the old we as a planetary civilization need to be focused on defensive measures to protect the populace. Additionally enhance and develop new tech to clean up our messes and restore the natural systems on our beautiful and only home.
Refocus and reeducate as many as will listen that profit without responsibility to current and future generations is killing us all.
President Biden is not the only one, as the article points out, seeking to expand the charging network which makes a lot of sense for the future. Why the gratuitous personal attacks against him that have nothing to do the issue at hand?
The other problem is being able to recycle the batteries. Have we addressed that? I haven’t heard if we have. If we could take some steps toward lowering our CO2, that would be heartening. Electric cars could help, but there are other steps we could take too. Europe seems way ahead of us in dealing with energy and climate issues. I’m hoping we can just move in the right direction for the next several years to catch up and can start to see ourselves as a partner and neighbor of other countries, instead of the overgrown brat of the planet.
Current recycling technologies are inadequate to the task though there are several promising possibilities being explored. Some recycling is occurring reusing the batteries to store power for home solar installations. Tesla has an energy storage business that have and are building huge battery “farms” using new batteries to store many MWs of power at various locations in the world Texas being the most recent. Lots of interesting stuff going on of late covid or not.
I didn’t see Will’s excellent comment below when I posted, though I’m more hopeful than he and don’t think we should be focused only on “defensive measures,” though I agree these should be part of the mix. I think we need to take many steps in several directions at once. I love Will’s idea about getting it across to companies that a philosophy of “profit without responsibility” is fatal to our only planet. I’m encouraged by the stats coming out of 2020 that showed planetary healing from just one year of fewer vehicles and less energy consumption. Of course that healing will stop as people go back to “normal,” but the stats remain, perhaps to teach and even inspire.
Kindly don’t forget the real posibility, less costly way to do it, to use also solar panels to create electricity & charge all electric, incl. cars !!! !!! !!!
To the extent we use renewable energies, like solar, we are contributing to humankind’s optimal future !!! !!! !!!