The Battery Car Delusion
Bottom Line: Largely in the name of “combating climate change,” the UK government is set to ban the sale of any new vehicle carrying an internal combustion engine starting from 2035. This is focused on those vehicles that utilize gasoline and diesel fuel refined from crude oil. Battery electric vehicles are seen as the preferred displacement. But when the entire manufacturing process is considered, vehicles that operate on electricity and batteries do not represent a significant improvement over those using oil products in terms of their overall carbon dioxide footprint. And the forced deployment of electric vehicles will lower the R&D needed to improve the peformance of oil-based ones, a climate problem because they will still constitute the bulk of the UK fleet. A suite of transport technologies is required to meet environmental goals.
Focused here on the UK, a number of governments around the world are looking at banning the sale of any new vehicle that utilizes an internal combustion engine (ICE).
These vehicles run on oil products such as gasoline and diesel fuel and constitute the vast majority of the UK (and global) fleet.
This is mostly being done in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, namely carbon dioxide (CO2), to “combat climate change.”
As the preferred or even forced replacement for ICE vehicles (ICEVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs), however, do not represent a significant improvement over ICEVs in terms of their CO2 footprint unless all the energy for their manufacture and use is CO2-free.
And the reality is that is not going to happen any time soon.
Further, a large and expensive investment in infrastructure is needed to enable wide deployment of BEVs, and the government will likely continue to need costly incentives to encourage (or even force) people to buy them.
Yet it hardly ever gets reported that a large increase in BEV numbers will bring a variety of other problems, such as the impacts on human health of mining for the minerals, although these take place far away and are routinely ignored.
In any event, the UK’s oil-based transport system is hardly going away.
Even with a 100-fold jump in increase in BEV numbers to 10 million by 2030, over 85% of transport in the UK will still run on the ICE.
And it usually goes unmentioned that there is great scope for improving ICEVs in terms of their efficiency and emissions impact.
This will require no new infrastructure, but will require sustained research effort.
Even if the government want to promote BEVs, banning the sale of new ICEVs will effectively stop R&D in this area well before such a ban comes into force, thus removing the easiest way to bring about big improvements in the environmental impact of transport.
A ban on ICEVs would also have a serious impact on employment in a critical sector of UK industry.
A suite of options, including BEVs, ICEVs, and novel fuels, where they make sense, needs to be deployed to mitigate the impact of transport on emissions.
Findings:
• Focused here on the UK, banning the sale of vehicles that run on the internal combustion engine (i.e., oil products) in favor of those running on electricity and batteries do not represent a significant improvement in terms of lowering carbon dioxide emissions.
• That is largely because of all the energy and mining required for the manufacture of vehicles that run on electricity, such as making lithium-ion batteries.
• Banning oil-based vehicles ignores their constant operational and environmental progress, ultimately leading to a drop or even an end in the R&D to improve them – a climate problem because they will still dominate the fleet.
• All available technologies, including battery electric vehicles, the internal combustion engine, and novel fuels, where they make sense, need to be deployed to mitigate the impact of transport on emissions.
Read the full study here.
