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I don't know where your calculation went wrong, but it is wrong. It is very easy to calculate how much electricity electric cars would use, as the distance driv
by _ph_ 5y ago
I don't know where your calculation went wrong, but it is wrong. It is very easy to calculate how much electricity electric cars would use, as the distance driven is precisely recorded. For the 45 million cars you have an average annual driving distance of less than 15.000km and at 20kWh/100km you get 135 TWh. That is about 20% more electricity production in Germany. Actually it will be much less, as gasoline and diesel fuel production and distribution uses a lot of electric energy too. The German grid could provide that amount of power today, and its at least 20 years till we have so many electric cars, plenty of time to add that capacity renewable.
The biggest comfort advantage of BEV for the common user is, to rarely have to recharge on the road. If you plug in your BEV into a plain wall socket even every night, you start with a full charge every morning, removing the need to do on the road so in most cases.
The Ioniq 5 already advertises recharge times in 18 minutes, so choose that one, if recharging on the road is common for you, or just buy a Tesla, which are pretty close to that and have the best charging network.
If you want to have "green" hydrogen, you have to use 2-3x as much electricity and for the average consumer, hydrogen cars are clearly a step backwards towards BEV.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoActually it will be much less, as gasoline and diesel fuel production and distribution uses a lot of electric energy too. Could you explain this part? I'm surprised the production of hydrocarbon would use electrical energy.
- _ph_ 5y agoWell, the basic hydrocarbons come from the ground in the form of crude oil. But that has to be pumped out of the ground, into the tankers or through the pipelines. That alone adds a significant amount of electricity consumed. Then the refining process. That uses a lot of energy. A large part of that comes from burning even more oil, so the environment impact is huge. But it wouldn't appear on the electricity bill indeed. But still, the refineries eat up a lot of electricity too. All the pumping required, the big destillation facilities might be heated by burning oil, but the control and the operation is electric. And then the gasoline is pumped around even more. Until it is pumped into your car. All of this uses electricity. Finally, even the gas stations themselves use a lot of electricity as for illumination. I can't name precise numbers - my calculation was really only the worst case szenario. Some calculations claim, going fully electric with cars would only add about 10% to the electricity consumption for all the electricity saved in the fuel supply.