I understand you and I have to say that there are more than only a few things politicians like to say that are absolutely not possible if you can calculate and know how to look up things in Google. The whole German "Energiewende" and electrical car thing is impossible to do. It's just a wishful dream.
What is absolutely possible is to ban cars from certain areas for certain times. And the thing is, VW and the other car manufacturers are the guys at fault. I'm pretty sure they will have to pay a big price for their downplay of the scandal.
VW just closed one of their highest quarters ever, the Diesel scandal seems to have not affected the brand much. This is not what I expected but consumers apparently care less than what you might think.
Politicians will say whatever they want to get people to vote for them regardless of whether or not their plans are actually realistic.
The electrical car is doable as a complete replacement, but not overnight. It will need a lot of work and time before this can be a reality, but step-by-step we might get there.
How many Tesla PowerWalls would you need to have Munich's power covered for one week? I'm really to lazy to translate it, so I just paste it from my email:
Laut Google hat ein 4 Personen Haushalt im Jahr einen Stromverbrauch von 4.000 kWh.
Ich rechne einfach mal mit 50 Wochen im Jahr, an denen so ein Tesla-Speicher verwendet wird. Dann benoetigt die Familie im Mittel 80 kWh pro Woche (Winter ist dabei schon nicht dabei). Bei 13.5 kWh, die so eine Tesla PowerWall speichern kann, braucht diese Familie also 6 Stück davon, um eine Woche von jeder Energiezufuhr abgeschnitten sein zu können.
Jetzt hat Muenchen aktuell ca 1 430 000 Einwohner. Man braucht als ca 2145000 von diesen Tesla Walls und dann ist vermutlich der Erdvorrat an Metallen, die man darin verwenden kann, aufgebraucht. ;-)
I wish we could replace them. I don't see it yet. I doubt it will be possible in the next 20 years.
The diesel scandal is the following: people like to drive big cars like SUVs. A car in the 90s weighed maybe 500kg. Now a new SUV weighs 3t. To drive this, you have to have a diesel engine. A diesel engine can be relatively environmental friendly if you add enough AdBlue. But AdBlue isn't cheap and the AdBlue tank takes up space in the car. So VW, Bosch, and the other German car manufacturers switched of the AdBlue as soon as the car detects it's not in a testing setup.
We were more environmental friendly in the 90s only because our cars didn't weigh as much.
So, can we replace fossil fuels in energy generators?
A lot of countries like Brazil build new nuclear reactors to generate energy. The problem is, the waste is going no where. Maybe it's possible to send the waste to the backside of the moon, but the risk of an exploding rocket seems too high for me.
Solar energy does generate only energy when the sun is shining. That's maybe 12h a day and it depends a lot on the location on earth surface. The problem of storage and transportation of energy isn't solved yet.
Wind energy is massively changing. It can generate a lot of energy in a short time period and the next week there isn't even a breeze. It's hard to switch power plants on and off as fast as the wind is changing.
I was thinking, there should be Tesla Power Walls or similar technology next to decentralized wind and solar energy generators. But I really doubt it is possible to switch of all fossil energy.
It's not optional to switch, and soon. The next 20 years will be too long. (Some niche cases can take longer to switch, of course, and that's fine.) If it's not possible we have the options of either using less or suffering massive problems in the medium-term future, which will cost a lot more.
I'm not sure what to do about this. Lobbying and investing in renewable research might not be enough.. but is there anything else really?
What is absolutely possible is to ban cars from certain areas for certain times. And the thing is, VW and the other car manufacturers are the guys at fault. I'm pretty sure they will have to pay a big price for their downplay of the scandal.