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Comment by Necromant2005 | Hacker News Reader

Necromant2005

Electro cars are great, until you start count. Ok, if Denmark population is about 5.7M and based on aerostat (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...) there're around 500 cars per 1000 citizen. It means country holds ~2.5M cars right now. In general (based on https://www.worlddata.info/europe/denmark/energy-consumption...) every Denmark's citizen consumes 20kh per day. 1 of 2 citizen has a car. Electro car charging requires 50kh (average electro car consumption). So It means Denmark must increase electric production in 5!!! times. In order just a charge those new 2.5M cars. I'm now talking about infrastructure requirements for this signigficant electric consumption increase, I'm pointing to the basic knowledge (by wikipedia) that around 50% of energy comes from coal and all renewable are less than 5%. COAL! MORE COAL I SAID!

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Yes you need more electricity but that’s offset by reduced gasoline. And you lower your total energy consumption because electric cars are 3-4x as efficient.

Yes, this requires more energy infrastructure. But note that in the US the majority of new generation capacity added in the last few years has been renewable. And it’s not because we’ve passed any carbon tax, it’s because it’s now the most cost effective form. The bean counters love it.

And of that new generation capacity that is wind, the largest manufacturer of wind turbines is Vestas, a Danish company.

LOL, no. Denmark used 67.5TWh gasoline and diesel fuel last year, due to better efficiency of the electric drivetrain it's equivalent to roughly 20TWh of electricity. Denmark also used 46TWh electricity last year, so they would need to increase their production by 43.5%. It's quite high actually, for Germany the same figure is just 31% (190TWh and 610TWh). All data can be found here https://www.statbank.dk/ENE2HA.

That assumes that every car in Denmark will consume 50kwh per day. The 64kw Kona Electric will do 300 miles according to the WLTP [1]. So, that assumes every car does 234 miles every day, or over 85k miles per year.

I can't find any solid data, but I'd assume its closer to 10k miles per year, or an eighth of what you're suggesting. That is still a lot, but it is achievable especially with more offshore wind.

1. https://www.hyundai.co.uk/new-cars/kona-electric

Just look how much gasoline and diesel was sold. Anything else will give you tremendously wrong result.

The last coal plant in Denmark will be retired in 2028.

Current regulation requires large district heating to produce electricity (which is no longer economical due to abundance of cheap wind power) and this delays the conversion of the last coal plant.

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