How come they ban gasoline cars?

Enjoy your car, because after 2035 you will most likely not be able to afford one. Indeed, in the name of climate dogma, the EU has banned the sale of gasoline or diesel cars in 2035 with the exception of the very expensive “synthetic” gasoline, as demanded by Germany.

And I ask myself, who is the EU to decide what kind of car we can have? With what authority does it decide this and on what legitimacy is it based? Did we vote for something so transcendental? This ban crosses a red line and highlights the authoritarian drift of the EU (the new USSR), an institution that we backed with conviction based on an originally good idea, but which has turned into an out-of-control monster that is robbing us of our freedom.

Italy and Germany, at least, have put up a timid resistance, but Spain (Europe’s second largest car manufacturer) has remained silent even though the automotive sector accounts for 10% of GDP and 18% of our exports and employs two million workers. To the green fanaticism of our inept government has been added the indolence of the non-opposition, the fearful silence of businessmen and trade unions and the usual inanity of the media. The only voice that has cried out in this desert that is Spanish civil society has been that of the oil company Repsol, for obvious reasons.

The argument put forward to decide which types of cars we can buy has been, of course, the everlasting reduction of that demonized source of life called CO2. I will omit for the moment combustion vehicles based on the chimerical “synthetic” gasoline to focus on the electric car, the true totem of the climate religion.

Electric vehicles would not reduce CO2

Contrary to the mantra, several studies have concluded that a 100% electric world car fleet would only reduce the level of atmospheric CO2 by well under 5%. One reason is that road transport by private vehicles accounts for just 10% of total global carbon dioxide emissions, but there is more. The manufacture of electric cars produces much more CO2 than that of normal cars, to the extent that, before leaving the dealership, an electric car has already produced 20-50% more CO2 than a diesel or gasoline car.

In addition, the electricity consumed by an electric car comes largely from primary energies that emit CO2 (such as fossil fuel thermal power plants) or that have emitted CO2 in their manufacture (such as wind or photovoltaic), so that the real reduction in emissions during the entire production cycle is much less than the propaganda would have us believe. In fact, the “green” character of the electric vehicle depends on the electricity generation coming from non-CO2 emitting sources, something impossible, since the intermittency of the inefficient “renewables” necessarily requires oversizing the system to be backed up by traditional energy sources. Thus, an electric car would have to drive about 200,000 km today to begin to represent a reduction in CO2 emissions compared to diesel or gasoline vehicles with the same mileage[1].

Therefore, the electric car, that “misconception of the modern energy era”, as Vaclav Smil[2] described it, will not reduce CO2 appreciably, but it also has several structural disadvantages compared to the internal combustion vehicle that were already evident at the dawn of the automotive era in the early 20th century. Many of these disadvantages do not depend on technology but on the inexorable laws of Physics, which do not obey political will and make the imposition of the electric car a complete delusion.  

Technical limitations of EVs

In the first place, it requires enormous quantities of copper (four times more than a gasoline car), which would put pressure on the world’s production capacity[3] of a mineral that is costing more and more money, water, and energy to extract[4]. On the other hand, it is highly doubtful that there are enough lithium and cobalt reserves on the planet to power a global fleet of electric vehicles. Lithium presents serious environmental problems in its production and disposal, which is relevant in batteries whose useful life does not exceed 6 years, and cobalt raises serious ethical questions, since its extraction is linked to child exploitation and human rights abuses in the Congo[5], where 70% of production and 50% of the world’s reserves are concentrated in mines mainly owned by China[6].

Apparently, the EU is only concerned about energy dependence if it is from Russia, but not if it is US LNG or Chinese cobalt. So, while China buys oil and coal from Russia and Indonesia we will buy batteries from the Chinese.

Forget about travelling by car

Therefore, not only will there not be cars for everyone, but their price will be prohibitive for part of the population, and those who can afford them will have to forget about going on vacation in them. Indeed, its average range will be around 300 km or less, since the range anxiety caused by the impossibility of finding charging points and being able to recharge in reasonable times will force us to be prudent. The fact that 50 kg of gasoline can run 700 km (thanks to its energy density) while 300-500 kg of battery can only run half that distance explains why, in free competition, electric cars have never been chosen by the public.

On top of that, battery recharging presents today unsolvable problems. Domestic recharging takes many hours, so, given that there may only be one charging point for every 10 garage spots, you will be able to charge your car once every ten nights by strict neighborly order, like in the rationing systems of the Communist regimes. And how will those who do not have a garage charge it? It is not known, but millions of cars in our country sleep in the street.

If you happen to find an electric station while traveling, it will be impossible to recharge in a reasonable time. Compared to the 3 minutes needed to refuel a gasoline car, it will take 40 minutes at a fast-recharging point, and about 15 minutes at the “ultra-fast” ones (one hour of waiting if there are four cars in front of you). However, ultra-fast battery chargers are used only to promote the electric car and will be a rare exception. Why? Among other reasons, because it would require a resizing of the electrical system: imagine 2-4 charging points in each of the nearly 12,000 gas stations in our country at a minimum of 150 KW of installed power per point.

Moreover, ultra-fast charging could deteriorate the batteries[7], which in optimal conditions have a theoretical lifetime of only 150,000 km depending on the outside temperature, the use of air conditioning or constant speed and the charging regime: as with cell phones, if you charge the battery in a suboptimal way, the battery will last less, so you will have to choose between either maximizing the range or the lifetime of your battery, a devilish decision.  

Finally, an electric migration of the car fleet would increase the demand for electricity and would require an increase in the generation capacity of the system that would require significant volumes of investment, a fact aggravated by the growing weight of intermittent, inefficient and expensive energies such as photovoltaic, which does not generate electricity at night, and wind power, which generates little electricity at night, when the wind comes down. Remember that it is precisely at night when most of the electric cars for private use would be recharging.

Target: destroy freedom and private property

In short, this dictatorial EU ban, completely alien to the will of the people, will prevent part of the population from having access to a car and, those who can, will be impoverished and unable to travel. As at the beginning of the 20th century, the private car will no longer be within the reach of the majority and will become a luxury good.

So, you may ask, if this ban is such an intolerable attack on freedom and such an attack on logic, why is it being taken? Perhaps it is just an occurrence of a bureaucracy as arrogant as it is ignorant that believes that the ban will encourage the discovery of magical technologies, even though there is not a single precedent for it in history. Or perhaps they may simply do so at the whim of ideology, political correctness or the undue influence of those lobbies that scurry around the most shadowy corners of Brussels when the sun goes down.

But there is the possibility that they have pushed this proposal being perfectly aware of its consequences with the ultimate goal of de facto banning the private car, the quintessential symbol of freedom of movement and private property. It would be the first example of the “have nothing and be happy” of Davos, the EU’s puppet master, and will be linked to the sinister 15-minute cities’ initiative, which is how long it takes to drive around a concentration camp. If you think this is far-fetched, see what the climate shamans in our government aspire to:

Climate change is not only the greatest scam of all time, but the pretext for the new totalitarianism. The threat that once appeared dubious, like a distant hazy blur on the horizon, is now beginning to materialize into very real impositions. It is not a mock drill. Wake up.