christmasoompa

Not in the UK, there are charging points pretty much everywhere here - even the car park at my daughter's school has a couple (bear in mind we live in rural Berkshire, so hardly a metropolitan hub!). It's probably very different in the UAE, but if the OP's wife is in London I doubt she'd struggle to find a charging point.

If the car you saw was big then I'm guessing that was a Model X, so about 350 mile/560km range I think.

mission

Thanks and now that you mention it, it was a Model X - was HUGE.

christmasoompa

They are, will tow a fair weight too which is pretty impressive for an electric car! I don't actually like the X much, think it's quite ugly, much prefer the S (which is what we've got).

mission

yeah i gotta say i wasn't really taken in with the size nor the shape which is why it actually caught my eye....coz i was thinking what in the hell is that lol.

Bahtatboy

Those last three words in the link itself should send a clear warning about the content.

DXBtoDOH

Attack the messenger but not the message?

Bahtatboy

Ok, hatchet-job time. I wasn’t expecting it to be difficult, and true enough…

1 Headline part 1: Electric cars are not as green as you think.
Article provides no basis for how green people think electric cars are. So false premise No. 1.
Fail / lie No.1.

2 Headline part 2: Some electric cars are worse polluters than petrol!
Setting aside the grammatical / logical mistake (…than petrol cars), the article later states, “electric cars are indeed greener than petrol or diesel cars of the same size”. So, false premise No. 2.
Fail / lie No. 2.

3 False premise No. 2 also ignores the fact that electricity generation (at least in the west, and you don’t see too many Teslas in the third world) is accelerating towards renewable, meaning that CO2 emissions will decrease per kWh of electricity required for running electric vehicles, thus increasing their relative “greenness”.
Fail / lie No. 3.

4 “… electric cars … can be every bit as polluting as their petrol and diesel forebears …” This is a repetition of points 2 and 3 above.
Fail / lie No. 4.

5 “The boffins at the Trancik Lab have shown that an electric Tesla Model S P100D saloon produces more carbon dioxide … that a petrol-driven run-around such as the Mitsubishi Mirage …”. Repetition of points 2 and 3 above.
Fail / lie No. 5.

6 "51% of UK power comes from fossil-fuel power plants." Same as point 2 above.
Fail / lie No. 6.

7 “many [electric car] owners are under the impression that their cars can be big, and yet miraculously have no environmental consequences”.
Really, where’s the data to back that statement up?
Fail / lie No. 7.

8 “Mining cobalt and lithium is as bad as using petrol and diesel.”
Perhaps, but the article merely presents data but doesn’t use make a true comparison.
Incomplete assessment.

9 “And then of course there is the problem of what happens to the batteries when they reach the end of their lives. It is thought that 11 million tons of old lithium-ion batteries will be thrown away over the next 12 years, of which only 5 per cent will be recycled.” Thought by whom? What are the risks of improperly disposed-of lithium? Is recycling it environmentally economic?
Incomplete assessment.

10 “…manufacture [of electric cars] can often be just as environmentally damaging as producing petrol or diesel-driven cars.” Presumably he means “producing petrol-driven or diesel-driven cars”, rather than “producing diesel-driven cars or petrol” as the syntax indicates. That aside, I don’t think anyone’s ever argued that making electric cars is greener.
Irrelevant point.

11 “the notion that, because electric cars do not have any exhaust, they truly are ‘zero emissions’ when being driven.” What notion? Perhaps in the minds of Daily Mail readers, but not in the minds of those with an ounce of sense. False Premise No. 3.
Fail / lie No. 8.

His name’s Walker, but I think that’s a typo…

Bahtatboy

See above. Call it instinct.

DXBtoDOH

Don't be pedantic.

Like typical DM articles, it's 99% sensational and inflammatory but there's that 1% truth. Green cars are still not quite as green people expect them to be when taking into account the long term environmental. factors of the electric battery disposal versus driving a fuel efficient petrol fuelled car I had a Prius for several years but I wasn't kidding myself about this. A lot of the electronic car market is driven by virtue signalling.

Having said this, I'm very pleased and supportive for greater transportation options beyond the usual petrol fuelled suspects. And we will hopefully see greater improvements and innovations in the future.

Johnnyboy11

I'm seriously considering the BMW i3 when I repatriate. There's something comforting about spending my hard earned petrodollars on an electric car...

As for the environment, meh!

Bahtatboy

One man's pedantry is another man's veracity. (Although I do admit to being overly-pedantic at times .)

As you rightly say, it's 99% bullshit and 1% truth -- so what's the purpose of the article? We all know, coz it's in the Daily Mail. Unfortunately most of its readership don't. Regrettably the Daily Mail does shape opinion, and therefore it has power. And with power comes responsibility, which the owner and editors of the Daily Mail ignore at best, and take advantage of at worst. Which is why I'm always willing to de-bunk their crap, and would not be sorry if oral attacks against them turned physical.

Bahtatboy

I'm in a similar boat. Already my coal-dollars funded my son's masters in Renewable Energy, which is a small salve to what remaining conscience I have.

I'm close to putting down a £1k deposit for the 3...

Bahtatboy

A little more research and deeper de-bunking (sorry CityGent, but it's more grist to your mill to justify a Tesla...)

This is a link to Trancik Lab’s “CarbonCounter” calculator, (Carboncounter | Cars evaluated against climate targets) which assesses a range of cars in terms of, among other things, their lifecycle CO2 emissions / mile (gCO2eq/mile). The calculator has various parameters which you can adjust, one of which is Electricity Emissions, measured in gCO2eq/kWh: i.e., how much CO2 is emitted to generate 1kWh of electricity.

That parameter is pre-set at 600, reflecting approximately the US’s current energy mix. The UK’s current energy mix (Q1 2017) is, approximately 14% Nuclear, 2% Offshore Wind, 2% Biomass (Drax), 39% Coal and 43% Gas, with an averaged emission of just under 600 gCO2eq/kWh.

In 1 year that mix will have changed, in 5 years substantially, and in 10 years dramatically, mainly as a result of Offshore Wind and the developments in storage / smart grid technology.

Coal-fired power plants emit 950 gCO2eq/kWh, gas 475, Nuclear 48, Drax 34, Offshore Wind 34, and PV 49 (these are lifecycle emission rates). Change the mix slightly by increasing Offshore Wind (as is happening as I write), Nuclear (hopefully not, and Hinkley is probably further away from generation than it was a year ago) and PV with corresponding reductions in Coal and Gas, and the current average emissions of around 600 gCO2eq/kWh can be halved. Quickly. Then drag the Electricity Emissions slider in the CarbonCounter calculator to 300, and see the impact.

Lifecycle CO2 emissions of electric vehicles are already far lower than those of petrol/diesel vehicles, and the gap will widen as the energy mix (at least in Europe, possibly not in the US) changes.

Miss Ann Thrope

Nobody appears to have yet mentioned that electric vehicles generate zero emissions in operation, particularly (!!) particulate emissions, ozone and NO3. Once electric vehicles replace noxious fume spewing dinosaurs, cities will become much healthier and more pleasant places for everyone. It will probably be like cigarettes: at a certain point people will look at each other and say why the f**k did we ever put up with that poisonous nonsense?

DXBtoDOH

And don't forget the tyres either. Much of the air pollutant comes from all the braking of tyres regardless of the car type.

But still a decent step forward. Especially if it bankrupts the GCC.