Long live the electric drive.

Sometimes I imagine how carriage builders at the end of the 19th century would have argued against combustion engines if they had Facebook back then. "If everyone goes to refuel at 6 am, there will be a line of 800 cars at each gas station, how is that supposed to work? And where is all the fuel supposed to come from anyway? We don't have any oil reserves in Germany, do you want to transport all the oil here by ships?" When it comes to particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, or CO2, most people complain about the 300 cruise ships in the world that are so dirty, but no one says anything about the 40,000 merchant ships that transport goods and oil. By the way, you also need electricity to produce fuels, about 1.6 kWh per liter of fuel. This means that just for our cars in Germany, we consume 80 TWh of electricity per year just for the production of fuels! We consume 50 billion liters of fuel per year in Germany and it's not squeezed out of lemons! And how many wars have been fought in the name of oil? The coachmen in the late 19th century would surely have been amazed that we drive around with 70 liters of highly flammable liquid. By the way, 13,000 cars catch fire in Germany every year! Combustion engines ;-) While everyone seems to be upset about lithium mining today, everyone skillfully ignores the extraction of crude oil. Just Google "Nigeria oil sands" or "Canada oil sands." In Canada alone, 145,000 km² of forest is cleared to extract oil from sand. The entire area is contaminated with chemicals for generations, but we are all excited that water evaporates in the gigantic Atacama Desert (105,000 km²) on a relatively small area of only 44 km²... And the car is to blame for that. Only 10-15% of the annual lithium production ends up in car batteries. The other 85-90% is used in cell phones, tablets, notebooks, Alexas, EchoDots, Bluetooth speakers, battery packs, digital cameras, electric toothbrushes, etc. Lithium is used in plastic and aluminum production, and the glass-ceramic industry alone consumes about 1/3 of the annual production, but the car battery is to blame... Oh, you didn't mean lithium. You meant the photo with the children mining cobalt. The poor children! For the record: Not a single combustion engine would drive a single meter without cobalt! 95% of the annual production is used for hundreds of applications, and only 5% end up in car batteries! And it gets even better, due to research and development, there are already manufacturers producing batteries without cobalt today, it won't be long before all manufacturers are cobalt-free. Combustion engines won't be able to do that, not even bicycles, as steels are used here that are hardened with the help of cobalt. By the way, cobalt is CONSUMED in fuel production, the cobalt in car batteries is only USED, as the battery is 97% recyclable. Quite cool, isn't it? Oh, you want to use BioFuels like BioDiesel? It takes 3,500 liters of water for every liter of BioDiesel. If this were introduced nationwide in Germany, it would require 73.5 trillion liters of water. That would be 1122 times the water used in lithium extraction... And in the case of BioFuel production, it's DRINKING WATER, not BRINE like in lithium extraction! Today, and we only have 7% BioFuels in our diesel, 61% of the palm oil imported into Germany is used for BioFuels. You regularly criticize Nutella and cookies because they contain palm oil and rainforests are being cleared for it, but you want to keep driving with diesel. Friends, those who fill up with BioDiesel have the rainforest in their tank! An area the size of half of Germany is cleared every year, but diesel is supposed to have a future :-) Ah, hydrogen is supposed to fix it then! It sounds so nice as an alternative. Let's clarify the fuel cell. We convert electricity into hydrogen to then convert it back into electricity in the vehicle. Sounds cumbersome, and besides, don't we have enough electricity? With 20 kWh of produced electricity, an electric car (BEV) can drive 100 km, a hydrogen car (FCEV) only about 40 km. If there's not enough electricity for the electric car, there's 2.5 times less for the hydrogen vehicle. Then there's the issue of infrastructure. Today, there are about 14,000 conventional gas stations, but only about 70 of them have hydrogen. A hydrogen filling station costs about 1.5-2.5 million euros. If you wanted to convert the remaining 13,930, it would cost almost 28 billion. No problem, Esso, Shell, and colleagues can surely afford it ;-), but each hydrogen filling station must have a 900m safety radius where no private buildings are allowed. That could be quite challenging. The charging infrastructure for electric cars, on the other hand, is doing better. There are already around 20,000 charging stations. It is said that a total of about 70,000 charging points would be needed for comprehensive coverage. Each charging station costs about 30,000 euros. If we were to set up the remaining 50,000, it would only cost 1.5 billion euros. But eMobility will be expensive... Now there are synthetic fuels, so-called eFuels. Then let them be the solution. Let's compare the efficiencies: - Electric car = about 73% - Hydrogen car = about 36% - Combustion engine with synthetic fuel = about 12% So, with a combustion engine powered by eFuel, you only drive 13 km for every 20 kWh used... Seems like a very inefficient solution, doesn't it? But, but the jobs, we have to save diesel after all! Germany has a 3% share of the global market (new car sales)! By 2030, 40% of the markets will phase out combustion engines. Let's repeat that: China, India, Israel, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands will BAN the PURCHASE of cars with combustion engines from 2030 onwards! Norway even by 2025! Anyone who wants to stick to diesel will have 600,000 jobs on their conscience in 5-10 years! VW leads the way, they are phasing out from 2026. Mercedes-Benz will also no longer develop new combustion engines and will completely phase out combustion engines by 2039. So, let's summarize: - Electric cars are a simple and straightforward technology, have a comparatively inexpensive charging infrastructure, charging at home is possible, and even free with your own photovoltaic system. Batteries from electric cars go into a SecondLife as stationary storage before being recycled, after 20-30 years of use, the battery materials can be recovered by 97%. Brakes often last 300,000 km and more, and the vehicles have very low to no inspection costs. - Hydrogen cars also contain a battery, but supplemented with complex technology. The infrastructure setup is very expensive and impossible in urban areas. The vehicles are very expensive due to the technology. The fuel cell in the car requires maintenance, is unsafe, and consumes much more electricity than a pure electric car. - And now to the combustion engine: problematic raw material extraction, BioFuels destroy rainforests and consume vast amounts of water, health-damaging emissions are produced, they smell and are noisy. Combustion engines are expensive to maintain, also due to constant inspections and replacement of wear parts. Therefore: As of today's technology and the expected progress in the coming years, the electric car is the most sensible drive option.