New Zealand Herald trips over its own anti-EV arguments

Poor Peter Kammler, tries to argue against EVs but can't quite get the hang of consistency

The New Zealand Herald trots out the old argument that Electric cars just shift the pollution from the tailpipe to the smokestack, because, says Kammler, despite their "...large share of hydro electricity, the marginal unit of electricity always comes from a fossil fuel power station...". But Kammler may not know that the EV uses so little power that if all the gasoline cars were replaced by EVs, the current off-peak unused electric capacity would more than suffice to charge them for the same amount of miles.

In conjunction with solar rooftop PV power, the EV uses so little energy that even a modest solar rooftop system can generate more valuable daytime peak energy than it takes to charge the EV off-peak, helping the New Zealand grid as well as lowering pollution.

Kammler goes no to a number of sophomoric claims about hybrids, diesel and EVs, none founded in fact; but the funniest thing is his claim that a lighter weight car will save energy, because, he claims, "...aluminium components need more production energy than steel but this is recovered through fuel savings in the first three years. When aluminium is recycled, its energy uptake is less than recycled steel...".

Evidently Kammler has not coordinated his verbiage with the current anti-EV argument that mining Nickel (for the Nickel Metal Hydride batteries) is so destructive that it makes a Hummer much cleaner than an EV or even a hybrid with a battery too small to plug-in.

Now if you can recoup the destructive cost of making aluminum with just three years of gas savings on the weight, gosh, you could recoup much more than the cost of making the Nickel in DECADES of oil-free driving in the Toyota RAV4-EV!

Gotta get those oily arguments to line up, but it proves once again, when they make stuff up, they eventually get caught. Stick to the facts, and they would not say such dumb things.

Back to main menu?

Back to Index of Entries?