The big and very stupid fantasy that's taken hold in the United States among a certain set of people is that electric vehicles are, um, "green."

This opinion derives from the delusion that all of the electricity in the United States comes from wind power and solar energy, which is pure nonsense. The wind and solar industries soak up tons of money and produce next to nothing in terms of electricity.

As I frequently point out citing a paper from the primary scientific literature, China, which has the highest death toll from also has more than 100 million electric vehicles:

Electric Vehicles in China: Emissions and Health Impacts (Cherry et al, Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (4), pp 2018–2024)


It also has the highest death toll from air pollution in the world, about 1.4 million people per year:

The original paper from which this post derives is here:

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

A graphic from the paper:



The first paper shows that in Shanghai China, the mortality associated with air pollution associated with powering electric cars actually exceeds that of gasoline cars in terms of deaths per 100,000 km driven.

It is a very simple fact - as irreversible as the laws of thermodynamics are irreversible - that a battery is a device that must lose energy whenever it is charged and whenever it is discharged. By definition, a battery is a device that decreases energy efficiency.

It is very disturbing to me as a scientist that people on the left, where I consider myself to reside, feel the need to worship, for example, Elon Musk, crony capitalist when what he is actually doing is to make the environment worse, not better.

He's received almost 5 billion dollars in US gov't subsidies, and I shudder to think how many real engineers could have been trained with that money.