TECHNOLOGY

Electric car mania – Ontario style

As reported on July14 (G&M, A8) the Ontario government has committed to building 500 electric recharge stations across 250 locations on the highways from Windsor to Ottawa and up from Toronto to North Bay -- as well as “workplaces and public spaces”.   Cost quoted at a mere $20,000,000.00.

So what does this really mean?    

·        * EACH electric recharge ‘pump’ will cost $40,000.00 to install ($20 M /500)

* 

·       *  On average, there will be just 2 rechargers per location.

·        *  Windsor to Ottawa = 405 km and Toronto to North Bay = 356.6 km. This totals 761.6 km !!!!

So, put simply, this is at best a very, very, very, very baby step and one which is not sufficient to really meet reality.

Unless you own a Tesla vehicle with a GPS system and built in list of nearby electric stations every 150 or so kms and you can line up for the two electric rechargers and spend 15-30 minutes for a medium to major recharge, the concept will not work!!!  20L or larger jerry can as does gasoline.

A car can on a full tank drive up to some 600 km;  an electric car less than 1/3 as far.

So in the real world you need much more frequent stations – 3 times more frequent – and with a lot more than just 3 electric rechargers each.

A proper network for Ontario cities, towns and all highways would require in all likelihood 5 times as many stations as our currently in the province, at an installation cost in the billions!!!

And don’t forget electricity does not drop from the sky.  Yes, solar powered panels and wind turbines exist but they will never generate enough electricity to replace Gaia’s gifts of: coal fired plants, or natural gas plants or nuclear power plants or hydro dams to create electricity – all so-called ‘enemies of the environment’.

So buy a Prius from Toyota if you must, but do not expect electric cars and mass recharging stations to even remotely replace the gasoline/diesel vehicles in the next 25 years.

Not unless, of course, gasoline rises to $25 a litre.

NOTE: In 2014 there were over 240,000,000 cars registered in the USA alone with just under 8 million new cars sold that year. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/).