Electric cars are OK, but public transport is better

Electric vehicles (EVs) are not the silver bullet transformation for our transport industry, but the momentum for change is building, and EVs might be part of the change.

Electric cars can help ease pollution if the
 electricity is produced by renewables.

By simply championing a technical switch to EVs we will miss the greater opportunity of this problem. Focusing too strongly on EVs will lock in existing problems around congestion, health and the liveability of our cities.

Read the story from The Age by Rachel Lynskey - “Electric cars are OK, but public transport is better.”

Electric vehicles alone could cause peak oil demand within decade

When Tesla announced that it had built 7,000 cars in a week, I got excited. Even though electric vehicles (EVs) make up only a small percentage of new car sales in most countries, those sales are growing rapidly.

In an aggressive scenario, electrified transportation
 could displace 8 million barrels of oil per day.

But how long before they really start to take a bite out of oil demand?

Norway offers some clues, where years of generous—some would say unsustainable—incentives saw EVs and plug-in hybrid sales grow to 55% of the new car market in March. And the cumulative impact of those sales may have FINALLY translated into a drop in overall demand, with gasoline in particular seeing a 2.9% drop in sales.

Read the story by Sami Grover from Treehugger - “Electric vehicles alone could cause peak oil demand within decade.”

Electric cars – we should be careful what we wish for.

With electric vehicles (EVs) we should be careful what we wish for. Recently 79 per cent of panellists surveyed for a newspaper said that more should be done to encourage their use, and the Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel, is an owner and a notable advocate. However, the story is not all good.

Toyota Prius.

Let’s take greenhouse gas emissions. Dr Finkel pointed out that a Tesla, charged at the national average greenhouse intensity of the grid (910 kg CO2/MWh), is responsible for 168 grams of CO2 per km (emitted at the power station), and a Toyota Corolla for 178 grams per km (at the tailpipe). He also mentions one of the smallest EVs in the Australian Green Vehicle Guide, the Renault Zoe, at 121 grams per km.

Read the comment in The Age by George Wilkenfeld - “Electric cars – we should be careful what we wish for.”

(Still, we miss the point - the conversation should not be about the effectiveness of any sort of privately owned vehicle (electric or otherwise) as the energy-rich infrastructure such vehicles demand is prohibitively carbon-costly. We face an energy-scarce future and rather than spending time, effort and innovation on what can be easily shown to be a wasteful pursuit, we should be exploring, creating and building a public transport/transit system that through its sophistication will make the privately-owned car wholly irrelevant - Robert McLean)