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hatrack

(59,587 posts)
Tue Aug 28, 2018, 08:55 PM Aug 2018

Electric Cars In Europe Pass 1 Million Mark; 1 Year Behind China, Still Ahead Of United States

There are now more than a million electric cars in Europe after sales soared by more than 40% in the first half of the year, new figures reveal.

Europe hit the milestone nearly a year after China, which has a much larger car market, but ahead of the US, which is expected to reach the landmark later this year driven by the appetite for Tesla’s latest model. Between January and June around 195,000 plug-in cars were sold across the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, a 42% increase on the same period a year before.

With growth speeding up, the cumulative total is expected to hit 1.35m by the end of the year, according to industry analysts EV-Volumes.

Viktor Irle, a market analyst at the group, said: “A stock of one million electric vehicles is an important milestone on the road to electrification and meeting emission targets but it is of course not enough.”

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/26/electric-cars-exceed-1m-in-europe-as-sales-soar-by-more-than-40-per-cent

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Electric Cars In Europe Pass 1 Million Mark; 1 Year Behind China, Still Ahead Of United States (Original Post) hatrack Aug 2018 OP
China had over 100 million electric vehicles years ago. EST remarked on it. NNadir Aug 2018 #1

NNadir

(33,525 posts)
1. China had over 100 million electric vehicles years ago. EST remarked on it.
Tue Aug 28, 2018, 10:08 PM
Aug 2018
Electric Vehicles in China: Emissions and Health Impacts (Shuguang Ji†, Christopher R. Cherry*†, Matthew J. Bechle‡, Ye Wu§, and Julian D. Marshall‡, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (4), pp 2018–2024)

Most of these vehicles are E-bikes, but the article reports that in China, the death rate per 100,000 km for electric cars is higher than from gasoline cars, but slightly better than diesel cars. The deaths however, are exported from urban areas to poorer agricultural areas where many of the power plants are located.

Nature reported that the death toll from air pollution in China is 1.4 million people per year.

The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale (Nature 525, 367–371 (17 September 2015)



If you look at this map, the worst zones seem to correspond pretty closely to the highest concentration of electric vehicles, at least as reported by the Guardian article, the Himalayas excepted.

I'm sure, though, it's just a coincidence. Has to be! Elon Musk, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine are all saints!

I'm not a fan of electric cars, which to my mind are nothing more than an extremely expensive and extremely dangerous shell game, yet another lie we tell ourselves to deny what we are actually doing to all future generations, actually a thermodynamic nightmare, because in fact, the quantities of electricity that derive from dangerous fossil fuels is rising not falling, rising; the fastest growing fuel in terms of additional exajoules in the 21st century as compared to the 20th century was coal (by 60 exajoules), despite all the delusional rhetoric claiming that coal is dead. We all like to pretend that electricity comes from so called "renewable energy" but almost none of it does.

Coal is not dead, and even if it were not used anywhere to generate electricity, the steel industry consumes 1.1 billion tons of coke per year, with the heat for coking coming from, um, burning coal. The Hall process for aluminum relies on petroleum coke to make electrodes that as they are consumed release copious amounts of CF4 (perfluoromethane), which according to the 5th climate assessment report has a global warming potential of 6,630, a factor of more than 230 times greater than methane itself.

But cars are wonderful, even if they are made from steel and aluminum, just like all those wind turbines we're always hearing about ad nauseum.

Batteries are required, by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, to waste energy. And yet they generate such huge pop mentality cheering. The laws of physics are not going to disappear because Joe Romm has forgotten anything he ever might have known about them, or because a delusional culture credits the bull he hands out endlessly as the world dies.

Of course, I dream at night about the laws of thermodynamics and I am acutely aware of how electricity is made, so I don't, and anything I might say doesn't, count for a hill of beans, anymore than Cassandra counted for a hill of beans.

If I recall her myth correctly, she was cursed with the ability to predict the future accurately, under the equally cursed responsibility to always tell the truth, and to always tell it loudly, the result of these curses being that she was raped and murdered.

Sounds about right. The truth these days is not popular, if, in fact, it ever was.

I have a certain sympathy for Cassandra, the real archetype for anyone who actually knows what is going on.

Cheering for electric cars is, under current circumstances, obscene. No one now living will every see CO2 concentrations under 400 ppm; in ten years that statement will read "...under 420 ppm," in 20 years "under 450 ppm." Electric cars, as devices that waste energy, are going to become a huge part of that equation.

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