'Which Uses More Electricity...A Refrigerator When It's Running Or Electric Car When It's Charging?'

At today's House Transportation Committee hearing, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) questioned Sec. Pete Buttigieg.

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[erichtisnado]

They didn't say 50% adoption. They are referring to 50% of new car sales.

[jlamarmiller]

Adding an EV to my household (20k miles/yr) raised my electric bill by $50, and cut how much gas I use by about $350.

[davidc]

Funny, I'm betting in 1950 no one was arguing we shouldn't have air conditioners, because if everyone has AC the electrical grid wouldn't handle it.

[dadofchen]

How hard is it to understand that not every household buys a new car every year. They are talking about new car sales, not every car that exist on America’s roads.

[tim]

I like how politicians have to debate the efficacy of something which engineers can simply calculate. Its a no-brainer that the people in charge of this should not be in charge.

[itsme]

Clearly we should all start driving our refrigerators.

[davewx]

Absolutely astonishing that this Congressman thinks he stumbled on some kind of slam dunk by comparing electric cars to refrigerators. Seriously, what on earth.

[gAMAchunk]

How much more electricity will we use for AC to compensate for global warming?

[prodantech]

There is excess capacity on the grid at night. It’s easy to incentivize people to charge at night as is done now.

[Ytinasniiable]

Just because a goal is lofty doesn't mean you shouldn't work towards it

[peterhoz]

What the questioner is omitting is the concurrent/peak usage. Aircon is often used at the same time, ie afternoon and evening. Cars can be charged overnight when grid usage is low. We're already seeing electricity retailers offering super-cheap pricing (like 75% discount) midnight to 6am for electric vehicle households for this reason. MG4 home charges (240V single phase) at 6.6kwh, my ducted aircon runs at 6.3kwh. But they'll rarely be run together.

[williamsych]

Well they already are telling people not to charge electric cars at peak usage hours. Maybe fix the grid before pushing electric cars.

[FlyingPhilUK]

Adoption means 'new car sales'
- but the replacement rate for cars is something like 5%-10% / year
- so, even if all new cars sold are fully electric, it would still take 10 - 20 years for the whole domestic car fleet to become electric...

[csf]

10 years ago, when I bought my first EV - I had just moved into a largish house with only incandescent bulbs and low efficiency appliances (like, ACs). I swapped all my bulbs for LEDs, changed my energy hungry appliances for energy efficient ones, added my car which charged only in the middle of the night, and my electric bills did not go up.

[jay-ru-me]

Anecdotal but my wife and I have electric cars and a 5kW solar system and our electricity usage is smack in the middle of average household. Pretty easy to offset from a usage standpoint. Peak usage will be higher while charging. With some work the grid will be fine.

[r.l.]

Green Energy is not about individual energy independence, it's about specific interests profiting from it. Case in point, a neighbor of mine, an engineer by trade, built a homemade windmill and placed it on the roof of his home to draw in free electricity. The system was well designed and safe. He even posted videos of it on YT (which have since been removed). Over time as interest grew, the township became involved and forced him to remove it, claiming eyesores and various hazards. Goes to show you that everything's cool until someone creates a system INDEPENDENT of corporate and political interests, then they gang-up and squash the little guy.

[AlvenmodFoto]

In Sweden, I saw a study showing that if we were to change all (100%) cars on our roads today to electrical vehicles, they would only use about 8% of the total electricity usage. Also, the vast majority of the charging takes place during the night hours when the overall consumption is very low, actually it helps to balance the grid. This argument of the grid not being able to support electrical cars is a myth. At least in Sweden.

[TheG]

be pretty scary to see a car charging towards you, but a fridge running is pretty bad too.

[alanbannister]

Before politicians speak, they should have to declare who their financial backers are.

[captainmorgan]

I’m confused is electricity all of the sudden free? If you still have to pay for the electric to run you everyday house hold items, and then add electric vehicles to the mix essentially quadrupling the amount of electric you use, isn’t your electric bill also going to increase by 4 times?