Costs and emissions: the ecological hysteria in Brussels on the electric car generates more unknowns than benefits

Two questions to ask. First: does the electric car certainly involve fewer CO2 emissions if we consider its entire life cycle, from the extraction of the critical materials necessary for its production and that of the batteries, up to its disposal/scrapping/recycling? No, if the Life Cycle Assessment method is used correctly, and there are a thousand studies that attest to it, and one does not simply look at the vehicle’s exhaust emissions. Second: in its use, the electric car emits less than the thermal one? No, it depends on how the electricity required for charging is generated. In Germany, one more electric car increases and does not decrease emissions, because electricity is largely generated with the worst quality coal. Last year, coal consumption exceeded 8 billion tons for the first time, with the contribution of hypocritical Europe which increased it by 6 percent to get rid of Russian gas. While now he inconsistently decides to depend on the Chinese monopoly which almost totally controls critical materials, manufacturing, renewable technologies and the electric car. We will pay the consequences in the future, such as those we are paying for the past reckless decision, especially by Germany, to tie us to Russian gas.

Commission’s and Parliament’s green hysteria hinged on Fit for 55 and REPowerEU green plans designed without having the slightest awareness of their real feasibility and the disastrous effects that would have ensued on industry and employment which, according to the European commissioner for industry, Thierry Breton, could be reduced by 600,000 units. While Biden supports national industry with the Inflation Reduction Act, Ursula von der Leyen destroys a cornerstone of the European one, except for shouting against American protectionism.

Today, around 300 million cars circulate in Europe, of which 98.6 percent are equipped with an internal combustion engine and only 1.4 percent are electric and mostly concentrated in high-income countries. It will take many years to change these proportions. Ultimately, the accounts will have to be done on the basis of consumer decisions.

In 2022, global sales of electric cars increased significantly, although by 70 percent in China alone. In Italy, on the other hand, despite the incentives, they recorded a drop of 26.6 percent to just under 50 thousand units, within a pie that is increasingly shrinking with overall sales in 2022 lower than those pre pandemic. Willingness to buy it is low and even more so following the explosion in the cost of its “fuel”: electricity. So that the car market is fueled by used cars, especially those over ten years old (just over half) with the reduction of a third of the exits from the circulating fleet. Final result: the opposite effect of what Europe has: a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Of the series, there is no limit to the worst.