Down with illusions! It is impossible to transfer everyone to electric cars

Leonid Zlotnikov

It's no secret that optimism about electric cars has greatly diminished since the start of their production.

First of all, this was due to the fact that the very release of this seemingly almost 100% environmentally friendly transport pollutes nature no less than the usual gasoline cars. But this is not the most important thing: it is technically impossible to transfer everyone to electric cars, and not only because they are expensive – it will simply be impossible to charge them.

Analysts Stepan Yar wrote about this in his blog using the example of a Canadian apartment building.

For his assessment, he took a typical 16-storey rear building with 4 entrances and 240 apartments, assuming that its inhabitants own 200 electric cars, and each has its own parking space. So, if the voltage for each electric vehicle is 380 volts of three-phase current of 16 amperes and a power of 11 kW, and the battery capacity is 88 kWh, then charging it lasts 8 hours, that is, the whole night. If all 200 electric vehicles are charged, they will need 2.200 kilowatts and 3.200 amps.

At the same time, the underground cable, whose cross-section according to the norms is 200 sq. mm, allows a current of 500 amperes. Our house will need nine such cables. After a simple calculation, it turns out that the cost of cables alone will be about 100 thousand euros, and if you take into account the design, permits, installation and connections, it is much more expensive. For the installation of one complex outlet, you need to pay 300 euros today in Canada, 60 thousand euros for 200 pieces. In short, according to the most conservative estimates, in order to lay a cable from the shield to ONE multi-storey building, you need to spend at least 1 million euros. This is the minimum, the expert says and concludes:

"Common sense and life experience speak unequivocally - you can put five such sockets on a typical high-rise building even with existing networks. But if ALL CARS are necessarily replaced with E-mobiles, then providing them all with charging, and moderately fast, and at the same time is an absolute mirage..."

Comments on these calculations also match:

- In the Canadian house of my friends, such a project was conceived. There is a long and low house with 6 floors, 20 apartments per floor, about 110 in total (because the apartments are larger at the top). Underground parking for 130 cars (some have two seats), 10 of them are already electrified. The project was to bring the charge to all parking spaces, nothing else. It is assumed that a sufficient amount of electricity has already been supplied to the house.Even such a project came out at about a quarter of a million dollars.

Well, most of the tenants at the general meeting said whatever. Fortunately.In general, there are much fewer people here than they are trying to drum into us who are ready to switch to an electric car.

And many people now realize that they are burning black.- That's right.

At the same time, the vast majority of the population does not even suspect that there may be some kind of problem. I recently tried to discuss this problem on the house forum. To begin with, he proposed to work out a project for pulling a separate charging cable from the energy supplier. I was pelted with poop: yes, hundreds of thousands of euros should be given for such a power, but no need to fuck. And almost immediately a new project went to the vote: to allow residents to install chargers in the parking lot at their own expense. With connection to the usual house network, of course. And when I tried to remind them that no power would be enough for this, which would end in blackouts in a particular house, no one even reacted.- I read that if all cars in Germany are electric, then the electricity generated in the country will not be enough to charge them.

There's just not that much electricity. What kind of transport will be in the future depends on the energy capabilities of countries. A radical change can occur only after the thermonuclear revolution, when there will be a lot of energy and it will be cheap.