EV Haters Don’t Get Scale

What if all your power was generated from fossil fuels? Would it then be more environmentally friendly to drive a car with an internal combustion engine? No, and here is why.

A major obstacle to get people to get behind electrification of our transportation sector is that they are easily tricked by propaganda from the oil lobby. The argument is simple: Until all power is generated from wind and solar, you can carry on driving a gasoline car, because it makes no difference. Those EVs are just going to be charged up with power from fossil fuel plants, right?

This argument, however, is a cheap trick that relies on the fact that most people don’t grasp the importance of scale in an industrial setting. But the logical fallacy is actually not that hard to poke holes in.

What do you think is more energy efficient? Everybody has their home attached to a diesel generator to produce power or gets it from a large oil power plant? Shouldn’t the former be more environmentally friendly? It eliminates the transmission line power losses that you get when power travels far from a large power plant. With a diesel generator the power has a short way to travel. Way more efficient, right?

No, you don’t buy that argument, right? Yet that is basically the argument lots of people buy regarding electric vehicles. We are told that there are losses in power cables, in the batteries, etc.