„The car of the future has a problem: there is no tank, only a bulky battery, which weighs several hundred kilograms but delivers no more energy than a few petroleum bottles. The car of the future does not need a filler neck. It draws its food from a cable. And this process is about as fast as filling a canister with a doctor’s syringe“.
These are the words of Christian Wüst, in his article on „Electric Illusions“, those illusions, which are cherished in Europe as well as in China.*1* The electric car should and will become the future mass-vehicle – in the face of climate change, this demand has turned into nothing less than a ‘categorical imperative’. But we should be aware that the wish has become father to our thoughts. We are forced to acknowledge that the creatures he has begotten are far from satisfying our grandiose hopes.
„The SPIEGEL undertook a practice test with the Zoe from Renault in February. At a velocity of 130 km per hour, it was no longer possible to think of the range of 400 km officially proclaimed. There remained no more than a distance of about 150 kilometers.“
Everybody seems to hope that hope itself will evolve into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it has done for more than two centuries of permanent industrial revolution. If only research be vigorously carried on, then most people feel sure that every problem may be successfully tackled. Globally, car companies are investing billions of dollars to switch from the fossil to the electric age by using solar energy. But there remains a hurdle. However great the financial means and the tremendous amount of mental energy put into research, we will not be able to change the laws of nature:
„Motorized private transport is tantamount to a squandering of energy, even without gasoline and diesel. An example: 28 heavy-current filling stations à la Tesla using the future 350 kW columns would put the same strain on the electricity grid as does an ICE (German high-speed) train with 830 passengers at full speed. Moreover, a full conversion to electric cars would increase power demand in the Federal Republic by about a quarter.“
Will climate change really be stopped or even diminished in such a way? In view of the indirect use of energy for the production of batteries, this hope seems rather unfounded:
„A study by the Swedish environmental institute, IVL, recently revealed what experts are long since familiar with, but prefer to ignore: not only are batteries extremely heavy and expensive, but their production also devours a lot of energy. In order to produce a single 100 kWh battery, 15 to 20 tons of carbon dioxide will be emitted. An economical small car with gasoline or diesel engine would have to drive up to 200 000 kilometers to achieve the same amount of emission. The study unfortunately leaves a gap: it does not mention the energy needed for the production of a conventional power device. But no specialist would deny that it is significantly lower.“
Likewise, no knowledgeable expert would deny that there is a solution that guarantees perfect mobility as well as minimizing the environmental impact. As carried out in Switzerland for years, public transport systems should be developed into a dense and well functioning network. At all terminals (and over the entire territory, for that matter), autopilot-controlled e-cars to be ordered and paid by means of mobile phones should be available round the clock. If the tariffs to be paid to the nearest public transport terminal were cheap, but more expensive beyond this limit, then only some further tax measures would have to be taken to ensure that air traffic too was used only at certain distances – in this way the direct as well as the indirect energy balance of private-plus-public traffic could be reduced to a fraction of its present value. Traffic jams would, of course, belong to the past and accidents be significantly reduced, so that the overall positive effect would not even suffer from a slow-down of mobility – the average speed of transfer between any two locations would probably even increase.
Against such a solution, which serves reason, every single individual, the state as a whole, and above all the environment, and would thus contribute to collective survival in an ever more endangered world, only one argument may be raised: it hurts the interest of the generation living just now. First of all that of the car industry – a most powerful institution. I do not only speak of those concern bosses we like to chide as capitalists. Opposing interests are to be found as much within the large work-force engaged in these industries. Here the overall economy as well as politics are directly involved.
Nor is this the only source of resistance. The population as a whole is united in dancing around the personal car as it were a Golden Calf. The car has long since been elevated into a symbol of personal status, which every citizen expects to buy and operate at limited cost. More than anything else it still embodies personal freedom – freedom on four wheels, so to speak. Unfortunately – at least when seen from the perspective of the car industry – people have meanwhile learned to think green and many of them want to act green as well. This is what puts manufacturers into a most uncomfortable position. We may well say: a quadrature of the circle. They are, of course, well aware of every point described by Christian Wüst in ‘Der Spiegel’. So what are they expected to do? The most simple solution, that is, a radical reduction of individual traffic in favor of public transport, is out of the question. It would ruin their business. So to them the only way out of a pretty much desperate situation seems to be fiddling (Diesel scandal) so that they may continue to sell the Golden Calf: freedom on four wheels, cheap and seemingly green …
Such inner conflict, which as it were divides the state and its citizens, is characteristic of many of our present-day problems. There is hardly any doubt as to the best solutions – as often as not they are even surprisingly simple – but most of them are, nevertheless, extremely difficult to implement, because those powerful interests, which belong to the present, would have to be sacrificed to the much less powerful interests of future generations.
1 All four quotations are taken from the article ‚Strom-Illusions‘ by Christian Wüst (Der Spiegel 34/2017; my translation).