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One of my relatives claimed that electrical cars are overhyped and my relative somewhere read that we don't even have enough (renewable!) power to support a humanity in which only electrical cars are used.

Is that true?

And what if "not renewable" power is used? Will a humanity using electrical cars then be able to be supported?

watchme
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    Is the argument that we right now don't have enough renewable energy to be able to let everyone suddenly use an electric car or that it's not possible to create enough energy in the future? – FooTheBar Jul 02 '18 at 18:53
  • @FooBar that we don't and won't have enough energy in the near future. So say like in the next 20 years it won't be possible. The argument is that many say "everyone should get an electric car" but we don't even have enough renewable energy today and won't even have in, let's say, 20 years as I mentioned above. the question was more ment to get a picture of how realistic it is that everybody gets an electric car or if its EVEN possible. And if so in which timeframe would it be possible (Of course great approximations as it depents on the demand of electric cars) – watchme Jul 02 '18 at 18:58
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    Could you refine the question more? One of your relatives does not make this notable. – JasonR Jul 02 '18 at 19:08
  • Why does the power have to be renewable? There are plenty of non-renewable power sources that provide a cleaner power source then a gas engine in a car would. Also wondering how fast electric cars are expected to be adopted versus adding more renewable power and currently I don't think there will be a mass adoption of electric cars. – Joe W Jul 02 '18 at 19:37
  • @JoeW: I think the point is that if we don't generate the electricity with renewable sources then electric cars are still a negative on the environment. They'd still be much better than normal cars due to more efficient/cleaner production, but not as good as they could be. – Giter Jul 02 '18 at 20:11
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    @Giter I would argue that renewable energy sources can also have a negative impact on the environment. Hydro power such as dams destroy natural habitats, solar and wind can cause harm to the animals that live in the area, biomass also produces greenhouse gasses. Need to remember that the definition of renewable energy is that the source won't run out or replenishes fast not that it is necessarily green energy. – Joe W Jul 02 '18 at 20:18
  • I think I found what the actually published debate is https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/08/electric-car-emissions-climate-change and it's not this question, so the publishe research from there doesn't help. – Fizz Jul 02 '18 at 23:24
  • The actual question studied was more interesting: "Zivin concluded that a plug-in electric vehicle, such as the Nissan Leaf, always produces less carbon dioxide emissions than a hybrid electric- and gas-powered car – but only in selected regions that rely on less coal, like the western United States and Texas. Charging from the coal-dependent grid in the upper midwest of the US at night could generate more emissions than an average gasoline car. And, in some US regions, plugging in at different times of day could even double an electric car’s emissions impact." – Fizz Jul 02 '18 at 23:30
  • The first thing that pops into my head is "what if someone had said the same thing about internal combustion vehicles?" - that there wasn't enough gas to power the gas cars if everyone replaced their horse. History shows that the supply rose to meet the demand and that any shortages were temporary. Indeed, this would probably be a great problem to have - that the adoption of electric vehicles be so rapid as to (temporarily) outstrip the renewable energy supply, excepting, of course, that the difference would then likely be made up with fossil fuels. :( – cpcodes Jul 03 '18 at 01:08
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    We have a rule that only widely-held beliefs are in scope for this site (or at least, claims made by notable people and organisations that are widely seen). Please [provide some references](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/882/what-are-the-attributes-of-a-good-question/883#883) to places where this claim is being made. – Oddthinking Jul 03 '18 at 02:14
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    Problems include: Who is hyping that electric cars must run on renewable energy? Who is saying that there is enough renewable energy *today* to do that? And asking for speculation on what would happen to an industry in the future, if a particular scenario happens, isn't on-topic here. – Oddthinking Jul 03 '18 at 02:17

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Using Tesla's Model 3 electric car and American driving patterns as an example, it is entirely possible that electricity needs for every driver could be met with renewable energy.

In short, if every driver in the world was a typical American driver then we would need to double the amount of energy from renewable sources in order to meet this new demand without affecting any other energy consumer. This would be quite expensive currently, however it is far from impossible.

Tesla's Model 3 standard and long range versions have battery capacities of 50kWh/75kWh, respectively, and ranges of 220miles/310miles. This gives us about 4 miles per kilowatt-hour of electricity for that electric car, and for simplicity let's just assume that's a good average.

The US Department of Transportation claims that the average American driver drives about 13,500 miles per year, and that there are 210 million Americans with a driver's licences. Assuming they all count as 'drivers' for the first statistic, that's roughly 3 trillion miles driven by Americans per year. So, assuming 4 miles/kWh and 3 trillion miles, America would need to produce roughly 750 billion kWh of electricity per year to power electric cars for all current drivers.

A quick look at a list of countries by power consumption on Wikipedia shows that the US consumes about 3.9 trillion kWh per year. Assuming the 750 billion kWh estimate is good enough, about 20% of America's current total energy consumption would have to go towards electric cars. According to REN21's 2017 report on renewable energy, renewable energy accounted for 19.3% of global energy consumption.

So, if America increased it's energy production by 20% and only through renewable energy sources, then the electricity consumption by electric cars would be met without affecting any other consumer. Although expensive, this is certainly in the realm of possibility, and the actual worldwide increase would probably lower due to smaller percentages of drivers outside the US.

Trucking addendum: In case the above DOT stats on miles per year only apply to 'typical' drivers and not truckers, here's some trucking info:

The American Trucking Association claims that about 450 billion miles were traveled by trucks in 2015. Assuming electric trucks are a quarter as efficient as electric cars, it gets 1 mile per kWh, for an additional 450 billion kWh on top of the 750 billion kWh above for a total of 1.2 trillion kWh. This means that even if trucks weren't counted in the previous DOT statistics then the increase would be about 30% rather than 20%. Even more expensive, but still possible.

Giter
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    I think this leaves out trucking, from Australia that is a big chunk of road use. (And you don't see many electric powered road trains) – daniel Jul 02 '18 at 20:24
  • @daniel: Yeah, the DOT's driving statistics I found unfortunately don't go into whether or not their 'average miles driven' counts truckers or not, so the actual average may be higher. I just added some info on trucks: even if the statistics I found don't cover them, the energy use is not a large increase. – Giter Jul 02 '18 at 20:41
  • You're assuming that an electric truck uses the same amount of power per mile as a passenger car? – Fizz Jul 02 '18 at 20:45
  • @Fizz: Good point, I added a more reasonable estimate for electric trucks if we assume they are 1/4 as efficient as cars(a quick Google search said semi-trucks get 6 mpg). – Giter Jul 02 '18 at 20:55
  • Once we get electric trucking, then we will need electric airlines. – GEdgar Jul 02 '18 at 23:43
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    You can drown in a river that's on average 1 meter deep. If you actually want to be able to drive every day of the year you need a lot more renewable energy production than you get by simply looking at total energy consumption. – Christian Jul 03 '18 at 08:19
  • @Christian: This is Q/A is a rough eyeballing of a **lot** of variables. Why using Tesla Model 3 as reference, or the average American driver? Why assuming today's transportation patterns? Why considering transportation, and not industrial, or home / service related energy consumption as well? – DevSolar Jul 03 '18 at 09:56
  • @DevSolar : That doesn't change that if your goal is to be able to drive everyday completely on renewable energy the yearly renewable energy production isn't a meaningful variable. What you care about might be the lowest 2 day period of energy production or maybe even a week (it depends on how much storage capacity there is). – Christian Jul 03 '18 at 10:29
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    @Christian DevSolars point is that this answer is doing an order or magnitude answer; is it 1, 10, 100 or 1000. You're talking about if it's 60 or 70; you'd need to massively reduce the approximations elsewhere before you even start to look at that. Giters answer shows it's plausible to do, not the exact cost – Richard Tingle Jul 07 '18 at 16:13
  • @RichardTingle : There's no reason why you would expect that this approach creates the right order of magnitude given that the minimum amount of power a solar cell produces per day isn't in the same order of magnitude as the average power consumption. – Christian Jul 07 '18 at 17:21