A few years ago, we were renting a place that had once been a plant nursery. There was a building on the property that was separately rented. The rock band that rented this building left, and the building was rented by a handful of guys who were working on self-driving car technology. They eventually left, too, being replaced by a guy who I’d rather not remember.
At that time, it was all about self-driving cars. Every car maker projected self-driving cars by 2020, 2021 or 2022. You could bet good money that this was going to happen! Being a technical person who tries to keep up with the electronics and automotive industries, I have always had great reservations about the validity (and desirability) of self-driving cars. Even though some people drive like shit, I could just never buy into the safety argument of self-driving. Assisted driving, absolutely! Self-driving? Not so much.
Well, now here we are in 2023, and some of the epic failures of self-driving Tesla’s has thrown a big old wet blanket on the self-driving fire. Now, it’s all about electric cars!
From the figures I’ve seen, the US was responsible for about 14% of worldwide air pollution in 2014. Of this, 57% was from the big basket that is transportation, and from this 57%, 27% of it was from cars and light trucks. So, we have 0.14 x 0.27 x 0.57 for the total worldwide air pollution from US cars. I get 2.15% for this.
I have to say that it torques me to see articles that show bullshit figures like ‘per-capita’ pollution or ‘pollution from 1850 to today’. These are both meaningless.
If we could click our fingers and immediately all US cars would be electric, this would reduce worldwide air pollution by 2.15%. Forget the disputes about pollution caused by battery manufacturing. What about charging. Some web sites point out that you can charge your electric car from 120VAC, that is, your home electrical system. True enough. What’s not so well known is that you get 2 to 4 miles of range per hour of charging! Yikes! Plan on a long trip tomorrow and your battery is well depleted? Your ‘Level 1’ 120V charger isn’t going to do it for you, not overnight!
You know, the cynic in me is thinking that the whole EV thing is just not going to happen the way proponents think it will. Yes, it will happen, but we’re not going to see 100% EVs by 2030. And if we do, it’s not going to have the effect its advocates predict. Seems that we’re counting on those future battery technologies that may or may not ever come about. Wait! Didn’t California in 2022 ask people to temporarily stop charging their EVs due to power system limitations? Why, yes, they did! September. Same for Texas in the summer of 2022.
Yeah, let’s go 100% to EV’s as soon as we can. What could possibly go wrong?
