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There is not nearly enough energy production in Europe for this unless the 240M car owners in Europe mostly all abandon their vehicles.

Robotbeat 4y ago
In the Us, we used to double electricity production every decade from the 1940s through the 1970s. Electrification only needs about 50% more electricity and it’ll take about 3-4 decades from now for all vehicles (new and old) to be electrified.
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  I have some bad news for you. Most electricity growth happening in the west is variable renewable energy like wind and solar. That is not firm capacity and electrifying sectors like transport and heat will double, triple or quadruple electrical energy consumption. Now, consider average wind speeds in a year like 2015 where for around six months, average wind speeds across north america were well below seasonal averages. Electrification needs 50% more electricity? Complete nonsense.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    Context was electrification of vehicles, and yes, we only need about 50% more for that. And it isn’t “complete nonsense.” It takes about 10kWh to displace one gallon of gasoline (gasoline car gets around 30-40mpg, an electric car like a Model 3 gets 4miles per kWh). The US currently consumes about 575 GW electricity on average over a year. The US consumes about 369 million gallons of gasoline per day, which works out to about 154GW steady state average electricity. Increase that by, say, 10-20% to account for distribution and charging (not counting the fact that this is offset by electricity being delivered by wires and not by fuel trucks which need fuel themselves), and we’re at 32% of US electricity to displace all the gasoline we consume. Gasoline accounts for most transport fuel (diesel is about 128 million gallons per day in the US), so yeah, I’d say I’m pretty close to 50% of current electricity. Battery-electric vehicles are better able to flexibly adjust use of electricity during time of day than other large electric loads like air conditioning (which tend to be used en masse at the same time of day with little flexibility) that drove much of the growth in electricity demand when we were doubling electricity production every decade, so I’d say we’re pretty well off overall. So what’s the need for histrionics about “complete nonsense”?
    - eldaisfish 4y ago
      I don't even where to begin with an "analysis" like this. First, your units are wrong. You've confused power with energy. The US consumes around 4,000 terawatt hours of electrical energy per year. That is 4,000,000 gigawatt hours. The rest of this calculation, like the original claim, is complete nonsense. EVs will easily double or triple electrical energy consumption.
      - Robotbeat 4y ago
        Nope, I used correct units. 4TWh/year (https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect... not 4000TWh) is a unit of power (energy per unit time) and is about 475GW average. Hour and year are both units of time so those units cancel out with a unitless factor of 8760 (roughly, as there are leap years, etc). I didn’t make mistakes in my calculation (except using 575GW in my calculation instead of 475GW), EVs won’t require drastically more power on average (again, gasoline displacement requires about 30% more electricity, as I showed).
        geraldwhen 4y ago
        I think what you’re discounting is the effort it would take to increase energy output in Europe (my original statement) by 50%. It’s not happening. Energy production is flat or down for the past 30 years. Flat or down. Europe will not build nuclear power plants so there is no hope of meeting the energy needs of a fully electric car population.
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        If Europe refuses to build anything, then yeah, I agree with you. But that’s true in general. Their old stuff will eventually collapse if they lose entirely the ability to build new, and this is irrespective of electric cars. But there’s tons of historical precedent for scaling up electricity production. Nuclear, of course, but solar and wind are new additional options that are even faster to install (with large scale battery helping back nuclear, wind, and solar, due to the scale up of battery manufacturing capacity for electric cars). (Solar is a challenge for Northern Europe, which is worse than 90% of the world’s population when it comes to solar power.)
rtkwe 4y ago
The ban is just for new sales so the transition isn't a cliff, it will smear over at least an additional 10-20+ years (probably more like 30+) as the remaining gas cars slowly break down and electric cars become the main available option.
akmarinov 4y ago
Yeah, that's why I said increase gradually. Surely you don't expect to have enough energy production tomorrow to cover all 240M owners? We can get there in 12 years + the 10-15 after that'll clear out all the ICE vehicles to cover all 240M.
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  Can I see the math on that? Unless efficiency improves dramatically that does not seem feasible.

Robotbeat 4y ago

In the Us, we used to double electricity production every decade from the 1940s through the 1970s. Electrification only needs about 50% more electricity and it’ll take about 3-4 decades from now for all vehicles (new and old) to be electrified.

eldaisfish 4y ago
I have some bad news for you. Most electricity growth happening in the west is variable renewable energy like wind and solar. That is not firm capacity and electrifying sectors like transport and heat will double, triple or quadruple electrical energy consumption. Now, consider average wind speeds in a year like 2015 where for around six months, average wind speeds across north america were well below seasonal averages. Electrification needs 50% more electricity? Complete nonsense.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  Context was electrification of vehicles, and yes, we only need about 50% more for that. And it isn’t “complete nonsense.” It takes about 10kWh to displace one gallon of gasoline (gasoline car gets around 30-40mpg, an electric car like a Model 3 gets 4miles per kWh). The US currently consumes about 575 GW electricity on average over a year. The US consumes about 369 million gallons of gasoline per day, which works out to about 154GW steady state average electricity. Increase that by, say, 10-20% to account for distribution and charging (not counting the fact that this is offset by electricity being delivered by wires and not by fuel trucks which need fuel themselves), and we’re at 32% of US electricity to displace all the gasoline we consume. Gasoline accounts for most transport fuel (diesel is about 128 million gallons per day in the US), so yeah, I’d say I’m pretty close to 50% of current electricity. Battery-electric vehicles are better able to flexibly adjust use of electricity during time of day than other large electric loads like air conditioning (which tend to be used en masse at the same time of day with little flexibility) that drove much of the growth in electricity demand when we were doubling electricity production every decade, so I’d say we’re pretty well off overall. So what’s the need for histrionics about “complete nonsense”?
  - eldaisfish 4y ago
    I don't even where to begin with an "analysis" like this. First, your units are wrong. You've confused power with energy. The US consumes around 4,000 terawatt hours of electrical energy per year. That is 4,000,000 gigawatt hours. The rest of this calculation, like the original claim, is complete nonsense. EVs will easily double or triple electrical energy consumption.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      Nope, I used correct units. 4TWh/year (https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-electricity.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect... not 4000TWh) is a unit of power (energy per unit time) and is about 475GW average. Hour and year are both units of time so those units cancel out with a unitless factor of 8760 (roughly, as there are leap years, etc). I didn’t make mistakes in my calculation (except using 575GW in my calculation instead of 475GW), EVs won’t require drastically more power on average (again, gasoline displacement requires about 30% more electricity, as I showed).
      - geraldwhen 4y ago
        I think what you’re discounting is the effort it would take to increase energy output in Europe (my original statement) by 50%. It’s not happening. Energy production is flat or down for the past 30 years. Flat or down. Europe will not build nuclear power plants so there is no hope of meeting the energy needs of a fully electric car population.
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        If Europe refuses to build anything, then yeah, I agree with you. But that’s true in general. Their old stuff will eventually collapse if they lose entirely the ability to build new, and this is irrespective of electric cars. But there’s tons of historical precedent for scaling up electricity production. Nuclear, of course, but solar and wind are new additional options that are even faster to install (with large scale battery helping back nuclear, wind, and solar, due to the scale up of battery manufacturing capacity for electric cars). (Solar is a challenge for Northern Europe, which is worse than 90% of the world’s population when it comes to solar power.)

rtkwe 4y ago

The ban is just for new sales so the transition isn't a cliff, it will smear over at least an additional 10-20+ years (probably more like 30+) as the remaining gas cars slowly break down and electric cars become the main available option.

akmarinov 4y ago

Yeah, that's why I said increase gradually. Surely you don't expect to have enough energy production tomorrow to cover all 240M owners? We can get there in 12 years + the 10-15 after that'll clear out all the ICE vehicles to cover all 240M.

geraldwhen 4y ago
Can I see the math on that? Unless efficiency improves dramatically that does not seem feasible.