ELECTRIC OVERLAND?

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• 18th December 2017 at 10:23 am
  
  Willy PittnerParticipant

  Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per kilometre has never been discussed. All we ever hear is litres/km in terms of petrol engines, with never a mention of electric engines.

  At a neighbourhood braai, I was talking to a neighbour, a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how the renewable thing was doing. He laughed, and then got serious. He pointed out that if you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, you have to face certain realities. For example, a home charging a Tesla requires a 75Amp service. The average house is equipped with a 100amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes) the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla each. If even half the homes had electric vehicles, the system would be overloaded.

  This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So, we have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter “investment” will not be revealed until we’re so far down the road that it will be presented with an ‘OOPS!’ and a shrug.

  One other question: if electric cars are not using fuel, will they still pay the fuel tax which is, in part, used to help maintain roads and bridges? And in South Africa, the ‘green’ part of using electricity is in question, since most of our electricity still comes from coal-fired power stations – the carbon pollution is only displaced elsewhere.

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