Comparison Between Battery Powered Electric Vehicles and Internal Combustion-Engine Vehicles Cradle to Grave 7 This could cause the closure of all exploration and refining of oil, which will mean extensive disruption to essential supplies in many industrial, consumer and distribution sectors that will impact every aspect of daily life. l If a reduced volume of crude oil will still be extracted at enormous cost to make the 6,000 products, proposals should be published by the Government. This would address the problem of what to do with the remaining 70% of light oil fractions that would previously have been used to distil petrol and diesel fuels which will have to be stockpiled or disposed of. l But there is even more to this problem. Batteries for electric vehicles are wholly dependent on an oil derivative, synthetic graphite, for which there is only one UK producer that is based in Humberside, England¹⁶. It exports its output to China for conversion into battery grade anode membrane material. Stopping oil extraction will have devastating consequences for all battery-driven vehicles. l An investigation needs to be carried out into the number of battery recharging points required to maintain the potential fleet of vehicles and their nationwide distribution. This will need to include construction costs, national and local grid capacity requirements including substations and connections, and a rural charging network. l The proposals to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles from 2030 lack any valid economic, social, environmental or operational basis, and we believe this misguided policy should be reversed. l We conclude that the best possible case for battery-powered electric vehicles is still not good enough for the country’s needs. We recommend that proposals for compulsory electrification of the entire UK fleet requirements by 2030 lack sufficient resources, planning and grid capacity, and that they will end in a deliberate act of national self- harm. It will distort the UK’s long term economic viability and will significantly damage our trading position in global markets. The Conclusions From Our Research Lithium is the most effective element in the periodic table for producing efficient batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are a mature technology having been around for many years, and we are rapidly approaching the technological limit of power density and capacity. There is no better element in the periodic table that can be used to increase either density or capacity even though solid state batteries could offer some marginal improvement in due course. Proposals for sodium batteries have yet to overcome the dual problems of bulk and range, as well as low energy density and the limited number of charge-discharge cycles, which renders them unsuitable, as yet, for use in vehicles. Predictions that battery performance in the future will be vastly-improved – by different technologies, alternative chemistry or improved functionality – are based on considering the improvements over the last few decades, and projecting them forwards. The physics of batteries are not established on faith-based ambition, but are defined by the absolute properties of matter and the laws of physics. We conclude that battery-based energy storage for comprehensive transport requirements is unlikely to materialise, even with the development of solid state batteries. If CO ² reduction is the real goal, then it would make far more sense to improve internal combustion engines and utilise non-polluting fuels that are already available; the supply of which can be scaled up in a matter of months. We have established that there is no clear, quantitative advantage in lifetime CO2 emissions for battery-powered electric-, over internal combustion-powered vehicles. The rational approach is thus to improve existing, reliable technology at minimal cost
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