While Electrics May Be Winning The Propaganda War, Jens Feels That They're Not Even Close To Being The Silver Bullet They're Made Out To Be
autoX|June 2017

I like the Vienna Engine Symposium. It’s an annual meeting of engineers and R&D executives, trading knowledge and arguments – without the layer of politically correct lingo that we’re exposed to at press events.

Jens Meiners
While Electrics May Be Winning The Propaganda War, Jens Feels That They're Not Even Close To Being The Silver Bullet They're Made Out To Be

The talk was interesting. Wolf-Henning Schneider, head of supplier Mahle, began explaining the well-known scenarios of climate change, and the share of cars and trucks in greenhouse gases – 10%, not insignificant. Then he went into the details. If you compare the internal combustion engine with electrics, the latter doesn’t necessarily look great. To start out, producing a regular car emits some 5 tons of CO2. For electrics, it’s twice that number.

And this means that with the German electric grid, a conventionally powered car can be driven for a whopping 4 years before an electric catches up in CO2 emissions. And a CNG-powered car can go for a full 8 years – equalling the life of a car. And if the CNG vehicle is topped offwith socalled E-fuels, generated CO2 neutral, the electric doesn’t stand a chance – there are no emissions added to the initial 5 tons to produce it. Even if an electric is recharged with emissions-free electricity (a pipe dream), it can never catch up.

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