There is no doubt about it, Elon Musk knows how to generate excitement and how to sell product. Tesla motors recently announced plans for the relatively affordable Model 3, a much less expensive version of their famous electric car (although some beg to disagree).
One of the selling points that Musk accentuates is the notion that buying a Tesla helps save the planet. Driving an electric car contributes to the environmental changes so desperately needed for the big blue marble. This very claim about lifestyle is just ludicrous.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea of competition in the market place and a greater number of choices available for the consumer. And I like the idea of electric cars in general and the Tesla in particular. What I don’t like is some of the shoddy economic thinking that drives certain people to think that the Tesla Model 3 will be the revolutionary next word in environmental stewardship.
The simple reason for this is the enduring and unassailable law of economics – everything has a cost. This is what is known in common parlance as ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’. But surely, goes the common wisdom, driving an electric car is much friendlier to the environment; it has zero emissions.
Well Frederic Bastiat would be quick to point out that such a conception is based on thinking that is only looking at what is seen. The so-called hidden costs remain just that, hidden. What are this hidden costs? The generation of the electricity still comes from almost exclusively from fossil fuels. This fact leads to two complications that may actually be serious enough to turn the notion that electric cars are contributing to the solution on its head.
The first and most benign complication is something about which I’ve written before. The tax structures and incentives that are currently in place encourage the electric car owner to be a free rider; to use public goods without contributing his fair share. Since the maintenance of the public roads depends on revenue almost exclusively arising from gasoline taxes, the electric car owner gets to use the roads without directly paying for the maintenance. It is entirely possible that law makers will then have to keep gasoline prices low enough to encourage more of the conventional drivers to buy enough fuel to offset the loss. This additional consumption has the opposite effect on the environment that what was originally intended.
The second and much more serious complication is that fossil fuels are the primary source of electrical energy in this country. So as more electric cars find their way on the road, the use of fossils fuels will recede from the public view and become hidden behind the long lines of copper that remove us from the power plants where the chemical energy is converted into electrical. There may even be a thermodynamic argument that shows that it is more inefficient to generate the needed energy and transmit it to the electric car than it is to simply burn gasoline in an internal combustion engine. I don’t know one way or another – I simply know that very few talk about this hidden face.
Of course, the typical zealot who thinks only about the upside to the electric car will point out that the great and powerful Musk has a solar panel business as well and that we can all simply move to renewable energy powered by the Sun. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work.
The table below has a modest estimate of the cost required to outfit the country with solar panels that exclusively provide the energy needs of the USA. The amount of available solar energy is over estimated in several spots (6 hours/day is about 30% too large; 40% of total power captured is 10-20% too large). The efficiency of the solar panels is put in the middle range of what is currently achievable and the cost is brought down by at least two orders of magnitude. The estimate for total energy used in the US is taken as the lowest value found (about 10% low).
| Physical Parameter | Value | Units | Source/Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA area | 9.86E+12 | m^2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States |
| Solar Irradiance | 1350 | Watts/m^2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight |
| Sunlight portion of a day | 6 | hours | http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solar-information/sun-hours-us-map>/font> |
| Year | 31557600 | seconds | 365.25 days x 86400 seconds/day |
| Usable year | 7889400 | seconds | 6 hours/day |
| Total energy | 1.05E+23 | Joules | |
| Panel Efficiency | 0.15 | Based on current technology | |
| Irradiance | 0.4 | Assume 40 % of total irradiance is usable | |
| Total usable energy | 6.30E+21 | Joules | |
| Total USA Energy use | 9.00E+16 | BTU | http://www.eia.gov/consumption/ |
| Total USA Energy use | 9.50E+19 | Joules | http://www.digikey.com/en/resources/conversion-calculators/conversion-calculator-btu-to-joules?WT.srch=1 |
| Total solar panel area | 1.49E+11 | m^2 | total USA energy use/Total usable energy x USA Area |
| Cost per m^2 | 500 | Dollars | Gross underestimate of current costs |
| Total cost | 7.43E+14 | Dollars | That's 74.3 trillion dollars |
| GDP | 1.68E+13 | Dollars | That's 1.7 trillion dollars |
So even if the country were of a mind to do nothing but make solar panels, it would take over 5 years just to outfit our national needs (that means no growing crops, to manufacturing food or housing or anything else, no health care, no fun).
There would also be serious environmental effects with so much solar panel manufacturing. The chemicals and materials are far from safe (many are downright toxic) and the industrial process requires energy itself. Clearly solar power isn’t the answer.
The energy densities needed to transform the national use from fossil fuels to clean energy are really only found in nuclear power but even that approach is not without cost and risk; even if the cost and risk were appropriately mitigated there still remains the political opposition to this energy source; an opposition that is firmly rooted in an irrational fear of a nuclear holocaust that ever far less dangerous than global warming; and this fear is, itself, deeply rooted in the same muddled thinking that leads these same people to cling to the notion that solar is the answer.
So at the end of the day, I’m all for the consumer buying a Tesla just so long as he understands that he while he may be saving money he isn’t saving the environment; that he has yet to find a way to get a free lunch.