Environmental protection, the moral side dish of the electric car.

In the twilight of the electric car era, the discussion about electric cars is slowly but surely shifting to the wider public. At the same time, the discussion is heating up. The debate is driven by vested interests, misconceptions and assumptions. What many do not know: This debate is completely normal. Technological paradigm shifts have always brought with them “stormings”.

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In search of the perfect solution vs. chemotherapy

Obviously, for many people, environmental protection is THE argument par excellence for buying an electric car. Especially for people who don’t drive an electric car.

Supposed findings such as those of the “Swedish study” are currently creating a climate that is aimed at the environmental compatibility of electric cars. The “Swedish study” suggests that it would be better to drive a combustion engine in terms of CO2. The media readily pick up on this and reproduce it in fragments.

Comparing the total CO2 emissions of combustion engines and electric cars over the entire service life of a car is a much more complicated matter than is generally thought. And something that varies enormously from region to region and from manufacturer to manufacturer, both on the combustion engine side and on the electric car manufacturer side.

The best and most serious comparison, because it can be checked in detail, for the DACH region that I know of comes from Martin Rotta. You can view it here. Conclusion: A Tesla Model S generally always has lower total CO2 emissions than a comparable combustion engine. How much better, however, depends very much on how the electricity is produced.

That doesn’t make the electric car a savior. Not the perfect solution. As soon as a living being changes something on the planet, it leaves an ecological footprint. There is no movement without us releasing emissions of some kind.

While there will never be a perfect solution, the size of this “footprint” is very relevant. The smaller the footprint, the better. Sometimes you first have to create the opportunity to reduce this “footprint”.

However, there is a fairly large faction of people who reject electric cars on the grounds that they are not “the yellow of the egg” either. That is absolutely correct. However, just because something is not perfect does not mean that it is not much better than the status quo. And you shouldn’t reject it for that reason.

It’s a bit like having cancer, for example, and refusing chemotherapy just because it’s not the perfect solution.

Lack of understanding regarding technological development

This also reveals that many people do not understand how humans develop technology. It is not the case that humans are able to know all the facts and then develop and introduce a perfect technology. No. We develop a technology that is gradually better based on our current level of knowledge and introduce it when it is economically feasible. We are usually not aware of the disadvantages of this technology at the beginning.

When combustion engines were introduced across the board, nobody had the exhaust problem in mind. Not because they couldn’t imagine that it might one day become a problem, but because the last technology, the widespread use of horses with trolleys, caused enormous problems. Horses were very expensive to maintain. And there was a huge amount of dirt. Dirt that caused enormous problems in the cities, from poor hygiene and dust to the stench. In contrast, the combustion engine car was a real revelation.

It’s no different today. Electric cars are not the perfect solution. They are simply a much better solution than combustion engines. And here too, as with combustion engines, the differences are huge. While Tesla, as a pure electric car manufacturer, has focused on the most environmentally friendly technology possible from the outset (no rare earths, electricity from renewables, recycling concepts, etc.), other manufacturers are doing less well.

Electromobility will not prevail because of environmental protection

The other misconception that is widespread is that electric cars will prevail because of environmental protection. That is, if I may say so, quite nonsense. The environment is not important enough to us humans on average that we would proactively make such major changes just because of it.

The word “proactive” will make many a climate researcher hold their breath. Of course, from a scientific point of view, we have long since fallen behind as far as the Earth’s climate is concerned. From the perspective of mainstream citizens, however, nothing has really changed and this will remain the case until climate change has a major impact on all our lives.

In an early interview with Forbes, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was asked about environmental protection. He asked whether it wasn’t paradoxical to build these environmentally friendly cars on the one hand and launch rockets into space with SpaceX on the other. His answer is revealing:

“I am not really super-hardcore about being ultra-environmental and all things because I think you don’t want to make life miserable. We want to create a better future, but a better future is not one where we are constantly depriving ourselves of things we love.

I think the majority of the population sees it very similarly. Otherwise everyone would go and get their crate of beer on a bike trailer on Saturdays. At the same time, it shows where environmental protection will find support among the masses: In the comfort zone of the average person.

Musk continues:

“The reason why we wanted to create the roadster, is to show that you can have an electric car that is better than a gasoline car.”

Electric cars will prevail because they are the physically better option for private mobility. The electric car is already superior to the combustion engine in all categories except two: range and cost. This limitation due to battery technology is currently being resolved. And it is disappearing much faster than expected.

First and foremost, it has to be said, is Tesla. No other manufacturer has managed to create this comfort zone. With cars that are unparalleled in terms of performance and design. With customer service that, albeit with ups and downs, is incomparable to anything else in the automotive industry and with a charging network that lets you drive through Europe without the stress of recharging.

Economic efficiency

I believe that such partial energy transitions, which is what the switch to electromobility ultimately is, always have two dimensions: They do not necessarily solve problems, and certainly not comprehensively, and they rarely develop in the way people imagined.

Didn’t we all once think that we would run out of oil at some point and then we would really be in a bind? Deserted filling stations, broken-down cars?

What will lead to the end of oil in mobility is its cost. This is because the better physical design is also the cheaper design once scaling effects kick in.

If you look at the gross margins of Tesla, Mercedes and BMW in the high-end segment, you can already get a taste of it. These gross margins are astonishingly high for Tesla.

How can that be? How can it be that a technology that has been developed, perfected and scaled worldwide over decades almost has to admit defeat to Tesla and Panasonic in terms of cost accounting after just a few years? What will these cost comparisons look like once electric cars have been further developed and built in their millions?

My estimate is that in 20 years’ time, you will be able to buy an electric car with significantly better performance in all relevant areas for a third of the price of a combustion engine today. Whether people will still want to do so when they can simply borrow the self-driving car for their next ride is of course another matter.

Electric cars will make the breakthrough because they are much more economical. Environmental protection will not play a major role, even if many of us who care about the environment don’t like it. To stick with the title analogy, it will remain the French fries, the gratin, the baked potato. Nobody chooses a menu because of the side dish. The average consumer will always ask “Where’s the beef?”. And “beef”, whether we like it or not, is the money in this matter.

 

Ingenieurversteher Blogparade 2017

This article is part of the Ingenieurversteher blog parade 2017 with a focus on electromobility.