EV Boosters Cannot Do Math

Authored by Duggan Flanakin via RealClearEnergy,

According to Electrly, the electric vehicle charging manufacturer, it takes an average of 90 kilowatt-hours of electricity to fully charge a Tesla Model Y long range all-wheel-drive vehicle, 83 kWh for the Model Y performance version, and 67 kWh for the standard range Model Y. 

Each Tesla uses between 0.24 to 0.30 kWh per mile, or about 4,500 kWh over a year for 15,000 miles of driving. Other electric vehicles use more or less, but within a similar range. At 0.30 kWh per mile, that’s 90 kWh for 300 miles of driving for the typical week. 

The average American household without an in-home EV charging station consumes about 30 kWh per day, or about 10,720 kWh over a year’s time. With just one electric vehicle being charged at home, that total increases to about 15,220 kWh. For two-EV households, that total runs up to nearly 20,000 kWh per year (assuming both drivers commute to work). That’s nearly double current electricity usage for such families.

Without an EV in the garage, air conditioning uses nearly a fifth of household electricity, followed by space heating and water heating (a combined 25%). But adding just one home-charged EV changes that calculus dramatically. The EV takes up about 30% of the much higher total electricity use, dropping the share for all other uses significantly. 

Two home-charged EVs would eat up nearly half the household’s total electricity usage – and require thousands of dollars to upgrade the house’s electric panel. Today’s 50-kva transformers, which cost about $8,000 each, can power about 60 homes; that number drops closer to 40 if each of those homes houses one electric vehicle, closer to 30 with two EVs using home chargers.

For a city with 120,000 homes, which today may require about 2,000 transformers, the addition of 120,000 home-charged electric vehicles means adding 1,000 transformers, about $8 million. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because distributing 50 to 100% more household electricity requires generating 50 to 100% more electricity. 

All this costs money that most Americans today do not have, especially at the generation end. Especially with the push to eliminate electric generation from coal and natural gas and even nuclear energy. It also requires massive construction of electric infrastructure, from transmission lines to transformers to in-home charging stations accompanied by larger electric fuse boxes.

One might see all this as a great booster of the economy. One problem with this is that the U.S. is projected to have a shortfall of 550,000 electricians by 2027. Who will do all this work? Another problem is that most “studies” of the impact of electrifying the vehicle fleet and relying nearly entirely on wind and solar energy pay little attention to the impact on individual households and local communities. 

Who will benefit – and who will be harmed?  The “experts” either do not know or will not say. 

Do they play chess? Do they realize that wise policy making requires a chess-like approach of evaluating the impact of today’s moves six or seven moves down the road?

Then there are the side issues. 

Many of those who strongly advocate for an all-EV future live in cities governed by progressives whose public officials have been “soft” on property crimes. This may explain why thieves in the Seattle metro area have stolen the copper cables from over 100 EV charging stations in the past 12 months, leaving these stations totally useless until the cables are replaced (and then, often as not, stolen again). 

Belgian firefighters are lobbying to ban the parking of electric vehicles in underground garages, just as liquefied petroleum gas vehicles without safety valves cannot park in them. The reason? 

It takes up to 70 hours to extinguish an EV electric fire by immersing the vehicle in a skip filled with water – which can hardly be done in an underground car park. Worse, the water used to extinguish these fires reveals a chemical load up to 70 times higher than typical load limits for industrial wastewater.

Ars Technica reports one concern motorists have with buying EVs is the shortfall of public charging stations. The U.S. Department of Energy says that, of the nation’s 64,000 public charging stations, only 10,000 are direct current chargers that can replenish an EV battery is 30 minutes rather than several hours – and that’s if there is no line. 

What the EV-promoting journal misses in its excuse-me post is that those fueling up at the nation’s 120,000 gasoline and diesel stations can do so in far less than 30 minutes, usually waiting a maximum 60 seconds to access a free pump. 

As the old adage says, time is money. 

Speaking of money, remember that Biden Administration promise two years ago to spend $7.5 billion to install about 20,000 EV charging stations with up to 500,000 charging points in operation? As of March 2024, only seven of these stations had been built with Biden dollars. 

Maybe the reason is a lack of qualified personnel, maybe a lack of spare parts. Or is this money going down the same rabbit hole as the Solyndra and First Solar handouts?

Even in super-green Germany, whose zeal for environmental purity was such that it shut down its nuclear power industry (but reopened coal plants), half of EV owners regret their purchase or lease, many citing “rising electricity prices.” That same sentiment is growing in America and around the developed world despite the machinations of the globalist power elites.

The day of reckoning for the Biden (and other nations’) EV mandates may come soon, especially as defiant automakers have moved forward with hydrogen-fueled vehicles, cleaner internal combustion engines, and other alternatives to the electricity-sucking, highway-crushing (yes, the heavier EVs add wear and tear to public roadways) marvels, many of which rely on diesel generators or coal-fired power plants to operate.

But mostly, people just want to be free to make their own economic and transportation choices and not have some unelected bureaucrat making those decisions for them.

Duggan Flanakin (duggan@duggansdugout.com) is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.