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Originally Posted by grantp
If you take out the tax that only applies to fossil fuels (at the moment) how do the numbers look?
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Electricity is taxed in the UK. You pay tax on charging your electric vehicle. Saying "If you take out tax that only applies to fossil fuels" is a silly argument. That's basically saying "Well you are correct, but if you ignore the facts, you're wrong". The fact is, it's cheaper to charge your electric car than it is to fill your ICE car, quite easily.
It's a common misconception that green energy isn't taxed properly and is heavily subsidized. In reality, electricity is taxed no matter what generates it, and oil and gas subsidies outweigh green energy subsidies about 10 fold.
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In terms of grid usage, it takes significantly more energy to refine petrol, transport it to the petrol stations and then support the infrastructure than it does to charge an electric car. You are at a net gain in electricity if everyone moved to an electric car. The grid needs to adapt to how and when it distributes the energy, but you actually use less. Again, we keep getting told to look at the bigger picture, and when you do, you realise you're actually cutting out a lot of energy intensive processes in this.
Battery lifespan is also reported incorrectly. Current Teslas are reporting around 80-90% retention of battery range after 100,000 miles. So if your Tesla was originally doing 300 miles on a charge, after 100,00 miles it's still doing 240 - 270 miles. That's better retention than most ICE cars will get. This shows that in general, the car will outlast a normal ICE car. There are exceptions to that of course, some VW TDIs will still be here when the sun collapses. The all those 1.4L Ford Fiestas? Mine has done 120,000 miles, and it's on its last legs. You can say "oh well the battery might fail". Yes, but equally my co-worker bought a second hand Mercedes in really good condition, 40k miles. Timing chain broke after a week and the entire car was scrapped. These things happen with ICE cars too - so why do we pretend it's exclusive to electric cars? It's almost like we're looking for excuses to hate them.
So if the car battery is outlasting the car, it's probably gone on through 4-5 owners similar to an ICE car. It's done its job and had a good life.
Whilst battery cooling is a problem, currently battery technology is well within its temperature limits. The panasonics in a Tesla could actually do 600 miles on a charge. They're just limited to avoid overheating problems.
What do we do when an ICE car is getting scrapped? Take it to the scrapyard and destroy it. What do we do when an electric car is getting scrapped? Presumably we set the local nursery on fire and fuel it with burning babies. I mean it's so absolutely impossible to use batteries again, and dispose of them, the world is going to end when we use electric cars right?
Or we could do what Toyota does and repurpose them for a longer life. Electric car batteries are extremely useful even when they do not have enough performance to run a vehicle (which is VERY energy heavy). There are still plenty of uses for them, especially as backups and daytime storage systems.
Electric cars will not save the world and are not perfect at absolutely everything. But they are a significant improvement in many ways.