Will EVs' electricity usage burden the grid? A look at their impact

By Kevin Armstrong
Teslas charging via energy producting by solar panels
Teslas charging via energy producting by solar panels
Tesla

Teslas, which make up the majority of electric vehicles, got caught in the crossfire during the September heatwave in California. As a result, owners of zero emissions cars were asked to limit when they plug in to charge. However, now that the emergency has passed and cooler heads have prevailed, several reports are surfacing showing how little EVs drain the electric grind. Spoiler alert, it's not much, and maybe less than you thought.

Let's start with California. According to Scientific American, EVs in that state account for: "less than 1 percent of the grid's total load during peak hours." California has more than 1 million electric cars, the most of any state in the U.S. But what about the drain caused by the other 26 million EVs worldwide? It's even lower.

A research branch of Bloomberg studies "trends driving the transition to a lower-carbon economy," published a report looking at the global situation. According to BloombergNEF, electric vehicles add around 0.2% to global energy demand. That accounts for 27 million electric passenger vehicles worldwide using 60 terawatt-hours annually.

BNEF zoomed in on a country well ahead of the curve on EV adoption. More than 20 percent of the cars on the road in Norway are plugging in, and these EVs are racking up more miles than ICE cars. Plus, nearly 80 percent of vehicles bought in 2021 in that country are electric. So indeed, the system cannot handle such a drain - right? It turns out EVs in Norway account for 1.4 percent of demand on the grid.

BNEF also crunched the numbers to forecast future consumption. It researched two scenarios for EVs in the next two to three decades. One deals with the main driver of EV growth being market demand. This situation assumes there will be 730 million electric passenger cars by 2040. If that were the case, these passenger vehicles would increase electricity demands by 7 percent. When adding other vehicles like buses and trucks, the demand would rise to 11 percent.

In the other scenario, the report assumes the world will be net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. In that case, there will be 1 billion EVs on the road, which would increase demand to 9 percent, and when adding in other vehicles, that number goes to 15. The report went even further. If every vehicle on the road were electric by 2050, the demand on the grid would be 27 percent.

With more people going electric, that demand will grow, and it is up to jurisdictions and utility providers to upgrade the system accordingly. Every country, state and city must plan for this growth to handle the EV revolution.

Tesla Smoking While Supercharging? A Look at What's Actually Happening

By Karan Singh
Hot_Engineering3140 on Reddit

Winter is here, and temperatures are dropping, so one of the most common Tesla questions is about to resurface.

If you’ve landed here after frantically searching about “smoke” coming from your Tesla while Supercharging, take a deep breath—it’s completely normal.

Tesla Smoking While Charging

If you’re Supercharging in freezing weather—even with preconditioning—you might notice steam rising from your Tesla. But rest assured, your car isn’t smoking.

Your Tesla’s heat pump is hard at work warming both the cabin and battery to keep you comfortable and ensure optimal charging temperatures. Over time, condensation and ice build-up in the heat exchanger coils.

Why Does It Happen?

When you reach a Supercharger with your vehicle, the heat pump is still running hot, but without the cold air from driving to keep the heat exchanger coils cool, the ice and condensation quickly start to evaporate—creating what looks like smoke.

Since this typically happens near the front of the vehicle, where a car would traditionally have an engine, new vehicle owners can be startled by the discovery. However, rest assured that it’s just water vapor and it’s completely normal in cold weather.

In fact, this behavior can be experienced in any EV with a heat pump in cold climates. So, if you saw steam coming out of your vehicle and panicked, don’t worry—you’re not alone.

Now that you know what’s happening, go ahead and Supercharge with confidence.

Tesla Improves YouTube App With Smoother Playback

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Tesla made a lot of improvements in the 2024 Holiday Update, including more than 15 undocumented improvements that were included in the release. One of these was a stealthy performance improvement to the YouTube app.

Several people have mentioned they’ve seen improved performance on YouTube since this year’s Holiday Update - and there’s an interesting reason why.

YouTube Improvements

The improved YouTube performance in Tesla vehicles comes from an unexpected source—Tesla actually rolled back support for YouTube’s newer AV1 video encoding. Instead, vehicles now default to the older VP9 encoding standard.

While AV1 is highly efficient in terms of bandwidth, it requires considerably more processing power to decode and display videos. VP9, on the other hand, is less computationally demanding but uses more bandwidth to achieve the same video quality. This trade-off means smoother playback and better overall performance, even if it comes at the cost of slightly higher data usage.

Intel Inside

The VP9 video codec that the YouTube app is now using is much easier to decode, making it less taxing on the vehicle’s processor. This change is particularly beneficial for Tesla vehicles with Intel processors, which previously struggled to stream video at just 720p. When using AV1, these vehicles often experienced stuttering, sometimes forcing the YouTube app to automatically downgrade playback to 480p.

With this update, Intel-based Teslas should now be able to stream at 1080p smoothly. Streaming at 1440p is also possible, although occasional stutters still occur as the system keeps up with the decoding process.

Intel-based vehicles are the big winners with this change, but this appears to affect AMD Ryzen-based infotainment units as well, providing even smoother playback.

Chromium Web App

Tesla’s Theater apps aren’t native applications; instead, they run as chromeless web apps, leveraging the open-source browser built into Teslas known as Chromium (the open-source version of Chrome). Although this works quite well, there is a severe limitation - Chromium hardware acceleration isn’t supported on Linux, the operating system Tesla uses for their OS.

As a result, Tesla vehicles rely on software decoding instead of hardware decoding, which would otherwise handle video playback far more efficiently. A potential solution could be for Tesla to transition away from Chromium-based web apps in favor of a Mozilla Firefox-based browser, as Firefox does support hardware acceleration on Linux. This switch could also open the door to better streaming performance and the possibility of expanding Tesla’s in-car entertainment options.

However, Tesla’s choice of Chromium likely stems from Digital Rights Management (DRM) requirements for streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix, which rely on DRM-enabled playback. Firefox on Linux has had inconsistent support for DRM due to codec availability and variations in operating system versions.

We’re hopeful that Tesla will either adopt Firefox or develop a fully native application to improve video streaming, rather than continuing with the current web-based Tesla Theater. This shift could also pave the way for additional in-car applications built on Tesla’s native Linux environment—perhaps even reviving the long-rumored Tesla App Store.

Regardless, this update is a welcome improvement, particularly for YouTube, which remains one of the most widely used Theater Mode apps due to its accessibility, free content, and mix of short and long-form videos. It remains to be seen whether similar improvements are made for Netflix, Disney+, or other streaming platforms.

If you’ve noticed improved performance in Theater Mode, now you know why.

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