Statists dislike allowing serfs the ability to move about of their own volition. The light aircraft industry, and the ability of common folk to afford flight training and the purchase of aircraft allowing them to easily cross a thousand miles in a day under their own power and at their own volition were things essentially done away with by the end of the 1980s, through the connivance of trial lawyers and insurance companies (remember that lawyers are over-represented in politics.) That was good news for totalitarians, but there was much left undone.
Recently, Klaus Schwab allowed that private transportation is wasteful and should be abolished (meaning your and my motorcycles, cars and trucks, not, of course, the private jet aircraft that congregate annually in Davos and at the WEF facilities in communist China and probably will into the indefinite future). Consider the following in light of this statement.
One horsepower is on the order of 750 watts (745.7) at 100% conversion efficiency. Simply overcoming drag at 60 mph requires on the order of 10 to 20 HP, with considerably more used dealing with necessary vertical and horizontal maneuvers. Let us go with the lowest numbers, such as 7.5 kW, and with an estimate of 84 billion driving hours per year in the US. This gives a low estimate of 630 TW-hr per year, roughly 1.72 TW-hr per day, 72 GW continuous. At the end of 2021, total US generating capacity was on the order of 1.1 TW. Superficially this would seem to require on the order of a 7% increase in total 24x7 generating capacity.
In reality 10 HP is a very low estimate for average load. In addition, nothing is 100% efficient. We are talking about BHP or equivalent watt-hours delivered to the road. The electric motors are not 100% efficient; they get hot, as do the batteries (this is why Tesla S max available power is reduced by its control logic at speeds over 80 MPH or so), and that heat is produced by wasting the watt-hours stored in the battery. If for no other reasons than generating heat, the batteries and electric motors are <100% efficient. Then we have the power grid to deliver charge to places presumably within walking distance of everyone in the country's homes. To fully charge a Tesla S requires delivery of 100 KWh. Even if you believe the EPA number of 402 miles per charge in that vehicle, that charge will have to be replaced or topped off frequently. My house uses on the order of 64 kWh/day. Charging a Tesla S daily would increase my personal consumption of electric energy by a factor on the order of 3, while if I only traveled 133 EPA miles average per day that would be more like merely DOUBLING my consumption. For people living in small apartments the increase ratio will be substantially greater.
The electric power distribution grid is not 100% efficient either, nor are batteries for storage of wind or solar-derived energy. However, here are a few key points: Firstly, it is obvious that the US must add well more than 10% to its gross delivery capacity, and pay a considerable amount of waste heat along the way to ultimate delivery. Secondly, the grid and local delivery capacity must be substantially increased as well. Thirdly, the parts of the country in which the availability of private transportation is most critical are those which are sparsely populated and hence those requiring long travel distances for services such as medicine and repairs, for shopping of all sorts, and for visiting friends and family. These are the areas which will require the largest increases in energy delivery capacity per capita.
Further, the energy consumption for charging vehicles will not be smoothly distributed throughout the day. There will be peak demands at the most common charging times, and if the charging stations are not where the vehicle is normally or conveniently parked, arranging for staggered charging schedules will not be straightforward nor convenient either.
Looked at from the point of view of a bureaucrat, this will be one more thing to control. Right now there is not much a bureaucrat can do to control the travel of individuals. Anyone can find a gas station and drive wherever he or she likes any time of day or night, refueling as necessary along the way. Nothing is rationed. No permission is required. Look right now at California, for example, which is merely coping with normal demand and does not have its universal EV mandate yet. However already rationing and prioritization of electric consumption are increasingly being imposed.
I propose that the "EV Revolution" will never be completed. Long before the full, predictable results of this "transformation" have occurred (bear in mind that the above back-of-the-envelope calculations are intentionally very low), bureaucrats will reveal with great surprise that the necessary generation and distribution capacity will be infeasible to create without undue effect on "climate change", let alone inflation caused by creating all of this with non-market funding. The price of a kWh will increase considerably, priorities will be set, rations allocated, permits created at probably an additional cost, and long before full national-scale private EV deployment will be feasible it will have been priced and regulated beyond the reach of an average citizen who now enjoys virtually unlimited private transportation subject only to his own personal financial resources.
At that time, politicians like Buttgieg will again point out that people can easily solve "their" problems by switching to "public" transportation, and one bureaucrat's dream will be within reach: That of having direct control over how, where, when, and carrying what, common citizens may travel beyond walking distance even within their own cities, counties, and states.
Public transportation allows for inspection of baggage, checking of ID, recording of personal travel, and forbidding carriage of for example defensive weapons, simply as a beginning. Once virtually all travel, even over short distances, becomes "public", such totalitarian arrangements may be tightened and restricted further. The possibilities are seemingly endless.
Such developments would be dear to the heart of bureaucrats all over the world, and are in lockstep with the stated goals of the World Economic Forum whose trainees occupy tens of thousands of positions in politics and bureaucracy the world over. So, without the intervention of a superior force, I believe the above to be the inevitable ... and therefore the intended ... result of the ongoing programs to mandate Electric Vehicles, something that I believe to be a disingenuous intermediate step toward forbidding the freedom we currently enjoy with private transportation.
=== Above written 18 Sep 2022. Update on 20 Oct 2023: The International Energy Agency issued a report this week saying that global implementation of "renewable energy" will require 49.7 million miles of transmission lines will have to be rebuilt or replaced, and estimates that the world needs to spend $600 billion annually on grid upgrades by 2030. The revelation mentioned four paragraphs above appears to have begun. I wonder how long it will be before the "climate change" effects of all this will be discovered? - GB
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