E-mobility, the ecological solution?
Due to global warming, there has been a greater awareness of environmental protection and sustainability in Germany for several years than in previous decades. In addition to green electricity providers, manufacturers of electromobility also benefit from the current environmental awareness of consumers.
Even if e-cars are legally declared as zero-emission vehicles, they are usually responsible for more CO2 emissions than is generally known. In the course of the discussion round “Future car, environment and mobility” of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the former research worker at VW, Dr. Alfred Hartung, questioned the sustainability of electric cars in a lecture.
Why e-mobility is not a solution
It is obvious that e-cars do not provide a solution for less traffic and parking. A electric car causes traffic jams and requires parking spaces in the same way as a vehicle with a petrol engine. Furthermore, e-cars cause noise comparable to rolling noise, since today’s combustion engines usually only generate minimal noise. Accordingly, e-mobility is not a solution in this regard.
In an interview with the SR, the former member of the Bundestag and non-fiction author Winfried Wolf described that the car lobby’s call for electromobility to be established in Germany was mainly for economic reasons and would lead to fuller roads. Environmentally friendly measures are only a pretext, because there are no concrete plans to replace the existing vehicles.
Supplying the electric vehicles with electricity would cause further logistical problems. If the 47.1 million passenger vehicles registered in Germany were electric cars overnight, there would not be enough charging options for them, which would result in expensive investments.
The main argument to achieve a better CO2 balance through electromobility would only be partially true due to increased raw material extraction, argues Hartung. The annual production of nickel, cobalt and lithium would be about 50, 50 and 250 percent higher with the production of 11.8 million electric vehicles (25 percent of the currently registered vehicles in Germany) than with current consumption. In addition, e-cars are often purchased by consumers as an additional vehicle and would therefore be an additional burden in addition to the existing combustion vehicles.
According to Hartung, consumers should continue to rely on public transport and bicycles for short and medium distances instead of buying an electric vehicle.
How e-mobility can become the solution
In an interview with the Wetterauer Zeitung, environmentalist and physicist Dr. Werner Neumann electric vehicles and sees them as the future of mobility. Neumann emphasizes that the federal government is not concerned with “electric SUVs”, but rather with the advantages of e-scooters, electric bicycles, e-cars and trains. In addition, e-mobility would make Germany less dependent on energy imports.
In addition to less effort in production, the electric drive is about ten times more efficient than the petrol engine, in which you have to invest four times more energy. Because “the electric drive has an efficiency advantage: From the battery to the drive to the wheel, there are hardly any losses,” according to Neumann. Neumann counters the argument that the production of batteries for e-mobility would increase CO2 emissions by saying that an e-car would have compensated for the additional effort after driving 20,000 kilometers.
Conclusion
There are always arguments and counter-arguments in the debate about pro or contra electromobility. How the disposal or replacement of diesel and petrol vehicles could work is not yet fully developed, nor is the lack of charging infrastructure if the number of registered electric vehicles increases. Nevertheless, according to Neumann, electric cars and electromobility could represent a long-term solution for curbing CO2 emissions and the associated global warming.
However, in order to be able to profit from the advantages of sustainable mobility in the long term and productively, technological advances and infrastructural measures are necessary.
Henry Ely / Editor finanzen.net
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