I DO NOT LIKE TESLA

Why Tesla (and others) are NOT so environment friendly

As a young student in France I drove a small car. That wonderful Citroen 2CV took me everywhere from northern Scotland to Bavaria, from Britanny to Corsica. That car seemed indestructible. True it started to shake and complain when it reached 90Km/h (56M/h). 0 to 60M/h took an eternity. Paris-Amsterdam was a 10 hours adventure. However it meant freedom.

How much energy was needed to propel that car? Well the kinetic energy equation is one of the simplest there is, to put an object in motion (decelerate or accelerate), the amount of energy needed is mass times half of the square of speed (or change of speed).

E_k=½mv²

With a mass expressed in Kg and speed in Meters per second, the result is given in Joules.

So how did my car stack up against a mid-range Tesla?

We will ignore friction and wind resistance. All we are looking for is the amount of energy needed to get the car to its cruising speed, that energy will then be dissipated mostly as heat as it brakes to a stop.

So it turns out that any trip in a Tesla M3 requires a minimum amount of energy nearly 5 times that of my modest 2CV. The fact is we do consume much more energy than we did. The graph below illustrates world energy consumption over the last five centuries.

Do we believe we will go on consuming more and more energy? Cars consuming 5 times the amount of energy they did a few decades ago are not an environmental progress.

When it comes to environmental issues the overall message put out by the media is one of confusion and ignorance. But dealing with companies such as Tesla, incomprehension turns into uncritical complaisance.

Most countries have embraced the notion of zero CO2 emission by 2050. Transportation is responsible for about 24% of all emissions, of which 41% can be imputed to cars. So while cars represent less than 10% of CO2 emissions, electric cars are seen as the solution often without appraising the provenance of the electrical power.

We often hear about future technological breakthroughs. In reality, from batteries to solar panels, progress is quite slow considering that 2050 is 28 years away. We need to deal with current technologies, not what might be in 20 years. By then it will be too late.

If we are serious about the 2050 target, the world will have to consume LESS. In that perspective, massive personal vehicles do not make sense, electrical or not.

What makes sense is smaller, lighter and less performant vehicles. Not 2 tons cars!

Better yet, let’s take the train.