With the world heading towards a ban on the sale of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2035, a common argument by misinformed ICE heads is the electrical grid can’t handle everyone switching over to EVs.
There are 230 million drivers in the US and if they all start driving electric cars, it would completely overwhelm the power grid, so they claim. Well, Jason Fenske over at Engineering Explained ran the numbers and found the claim to be false.
We’ll look at the hard numbers based on US drivers, average miles driven, average fuel economy and energy efficiency, electricity production and distribution, how long we have to implement upgrades, average household energy consumption, how power gets to our houses, local grid problems, smart grids, real world examples of where this has happened, and the future challenges facing electric vehicles.
After punching in the numbers, Jason found that the grid would only have to increase output by just 30% to handle those 230 million drivers switching to EVs. With the US increasing energy output by 4% per year since 1960, the grid will be more than ready when gas powered cars gets killed off in 2035. You got to love math!