Electric Cars

There are still a few persistent myths about EVs.

• One persistent myth is that EVs take more energy to produce or create more GHG than they will save. It just isn’t true. Recent papers show that even when a battery is made using GHG-intensive electricity, such as from coal-powered generating stations, an EV after one to two years has reduced GHG emissions compared to even the most efficient gasoline and diesel cars. Over the typical 250,000 km life of a vehicle in Ontario, an EV running on our low-carbon electricity will have about 1/5 the GHG emissions of even a midsize vehicle and 1/10 the GHG emissions of a gasoline powered cross-over SUV. Here is another study of life-cycle vehicle GHG emissions.

• Lifecycle emissions of EVs are proving to be lower in all countries, even when the electricity used to power the vehicles is from high-carbon sources. Here is another recent study debunking the persistent myth that EVs on some grids are worse than gasoline cars for GHG emissions.

• EVs and batteries that will be made in Ontario or other low carbon intensity electricity provinces will have very low associated GHG emissions.  To address climate change, our grids must go to near zero carbon, so EVs will have fewer emissions in the future too.

• All sorts of doomsday prediction are made about how an Ontario full of EVs will crash the grid.  Just for the record, when Ontario has around 5 million EVs, which will take quite a few years to achieve, to charge those EVs will use about 15% more electricity than the 140 TWh that we presently use per year.  Some EVs will charge during the day, most at night, and we will need a system to encourage overnight charging.  Home chargers max out at about 7 kW, so if 2.5 million cars all plugged in at the same time, that would add a load of 17,500 MW to the grid, the doomsday scenario.  However, on an aggregate basis, very few of those 2.5 million EVs will arrive home with empty batteries, on average, they will have done about 50 to 60 km of travel for the day (for a 20,000 km annual total). It takes about 8 to 10 kWh to replenish that 50-60 km of travel, so the actual load on the grid will be much less than the doomsday scenario.  Those 2.5 million cars will require about 2,500 MW for 10 hours to recharge them all.  The flip side of millions of EVs connected to the grid is that they can also be a supply of electricity if they have bidirectional charging.   Millions of EVs together represent an enormous energy supply, so we should be planning to take advantage of the grid connected potential of EVs.  If Ontario has 2,500,000 EVs in say, 10 years, at 60 kWh per EV battery, that's 150,000 MWh of battery capacity. If those EV batteries could support the grid to the tune of 5,000 MW, depleting those EVs to 50% state of charge would support that 5,000 MW for 15 hours.  We should not ignore this potential. I have ignored grid and charging losses in the above numbers, so maybe adjust them by 10%.

• Another myth is that batteries will need to be replaced. Batteries are typically warranted for 8 or 10 years and 160,000 km and have some loss of capacity over time.  Here is a very useful tool where you can look at battery capacity degradation in specific makes and model years of EVs.  The vast majority of batteries, like modern piston engines, will last the life of the car.

• With respect to mining of conflict minerals for EV batteries, there are legitimate concerns about abuse of workers, including children, in informal cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These DRC mines produce about 10% of the 140,000 tonnes of world-wide cobalt production (2019). There are also many precious metals in gasoline cars (palladium, platinum in catalytic converters) and all our electronic devices. Many of these metals also come from informal mining activities, and the same concerns apply. Most of our electronic devices also create mining work where there are some abuses of workers. Various human-rights groups are doing good work to reduce these abuses around the world and many firms are tightening their supply-chain vigilance. All these efforts must continue to make the manufacture of all products free from worker abuse, whether it is clothing, cell phones, laptops or EVs. Amnesty International continues to work towards eliminating the human-rights abuses surrounding conflict minerals.

• There are many (over 50) startups in the field of lithium battery recycling. Much of the analysis is in the form of proprietary reports, but here is a recent article from IEEE.