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

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

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.