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Electric Car Environmental Impact: Power Source Matters
another random user writes with news of a study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, which looked into the environmental impact of electric vehicles — not just how they do when driven, but how they are produced and by what means they are charged. The study pointed out that the production of EVs has twice as much of an environmental impact as the production of typical gas-powered cars, which must be taken into account when comparing the two. Also, they say it's important to consider the source of the electricity used to charge the vehicles. In places like Europe, where a good chunk of the electricity comes from renewable sources, EVs do indeed provide a benefit to the environment. However, "In regions where fossil fuels are the main sources of power, electric cars offer no benefits and may even cause more harm." The study says, "It is counterproductive to promote electric vehicles in regions where electricity is primarily produced from lignite, coal or even heavy oil combustion."
We knew this. All it does is move the pollution. It may alleviate smog and guilty consciouses, but that's about all. The same is true of hydrogyen vehicles and how the fuel is produced. The answer is thorium reactors for electricity production and cracking water to hydrogeb, but we won't do it.
Silence is a state of mime.
I'm not really surprised by this, but the article failed to mention anything about the impact of hybrid vehicles, which is something I find equally interesting. Anyone out there have much knowledge about the production methods for hybrids? I assume that the same problems apply to the electric engine component, but do hybrids have the same issues with batteries and whatnot?
No shit, sherlock.
What next, that study that showed Ethanol used like a gazillion times more fossil fuels but failed to account for the total production of the corn field, not all of which went to ethanol production, but went to the food supply instead?
Here's the real lesson to be learned: Stop burning coal and oil for electrical power.
I was under the impression that the manufacturing processes to make the power plant / batteries for *POPULAR BRAND OF HYBRID VEHICLE* released the equivalent quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere as would be saved by the reduced CO2 released by the hybrid drive over it's serviceable life. The net being a loss to society, as the process for making the batteries released toxic elements not used in making regular combustion engine cars.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Check out the thorium based LFTR, a proposed reactor that burns PWR/BWR waste too. It produces much less waste, that last much less time. It does not use high pressure reactors. Thorium is plentiful, easy to mine for fuel. It has anti-proliferation characteristics. It's been tested. If we don't do it, India or China will. It's mantra is "cheaper than coal", usually the cheapest long term utility fuel.
Although it might be interesting to see the environmental impact of changing a non-bike-friendly infrastructure (such as the one here in Southern California) to one where people could/would actually ride bikes in large numbers instead of driving cars.
EVs are mostly the same as any other car, so producing the one over the other cannot be a major concern. Regarding the electric power source - well duh...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Does the study also consider the production costs of the initial energy source, .i.e. the environmental impact of the coal produced for the electricity, and the impact of oil production and refining into petrol, which itself uses a lot of electricity. The impact of burning fossil fuels is not just in the burning of the fuel in the car, but what it took to get the fuel into the car. In the US where a lot of electricity is generated by coal, the fuel you burn in your car used a lot of coal to get to you.
Oy vey.. can't they just get it out? Europe GOOD, America BAD.
But I counter that lots of places in Europe have a very low percentage of renewable energy sources, there are many gaps in production. France and Germany still utilize quite a bit of nuclear energy, Italy is 90% non-renewable, and most of the biomass/biofuel systems still require a lot of non-renewable energy (even though they are counted as 100% renewable in such studies just like corn ethanol is promoted in the USA). They also ignore the enormous amount of energy and waste used to produce wind and solar generators.
Same is certainly true in the USA - being a far larger landmass it will take far longer to develop such programs.
So certainly it's a step in the right direction, but I wouldn't let such a study inform my decision-making process. The facts remain that the tech and investment necessary to keep moving us all forward to a renewable energy economy necessitates a market shift towards electric vehicles.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Since many Americans are obese (perhaps due to high-fructose corn syrup), maybe we can get them to turn a giant horizontal wheel to generate electricity. We'd not only be providing environmentally-friendly power, but also lowering healthcare costs.
While the amount of pollution produced by an electric car depends on how the electricity is produced, a couple of advantages of an electric car, even with coal-fired power stations, are worth mentioning. First is, I don't live next door to a coal-fired power station. So the pollution generated by an electric car is happening somewhere else, not in my neighborhood. While global warming is a global problem, not choking on exhaust fumes ever time I walk down my street is, I think, a bonus. Second, even with coal-fired plants, it'll be easier to upgrade and eventually replace a handful of coal-fired power stations than to replace potentially millions of cars. If the government mandated all new cars had to be electric (and I'm not suggesting they do), it would still take decades for all the old cars to be retired.
Obviously there would be a need to optimize electric cars for the environment in which they are charged. For example we might want electric hybrids in America that have a smaller battery pack as building batteries does cause environmental concerns. So maybe here we need a smaller battery pack but also a small diesel charging the pack. As my area is unusually hot all year long air conditioning in a car is a big concern and stored energy is inadequate for distance when one is also running an AC. The advantage of the small diesel is that it can provide charging at all speeds including idle speed. So in urban traffic where standing still often occurs you still have your AC and your batteries are getting charged and when you get a chance tyo accelerate the diesel can help out there as well. And since we have such huge sunshine here it would be wise to use solar cells on the exterior to also aid in charging and reduce fuel use.
But for those of us living in Europe, owning a garage with electricity is a luxury item.
That's why Rush Limbaugh always refers to electric vehicles as "coal powered cars." Because most electric vehicles in the US will effectively be causing MORE fossil fuels to be burned. That's the liberals for you. It "sounds" nice at first, but their ideas never work in practice.
One thing that I have wondered is if 'effective miles per gallon' takes into account line losses and the intrinsic efficiency of the power plant. If not than '80 empg' is more like 20mpg....(at least in a carbon sense)
love is just extroverted narcissism
Since the EV doesn't have to be run off coal fired power stations, how in hell does it matter that EVs run off a two-stroke home diesel generator create more pollution?
Because the answer to that "problem" is "Don't generate electricity from those dirty sources".
Easy done.
But as we can see, getting people weaned off their petrol cars is a VERY different proposition. They're like kids crying over their rattle being taken off them.
I just leased a Leaf for 3 years. Minimal money down and $300/mo lease.
I was driving a Chevy Avalanche. I kept it because I need a truck a few times/month but was driving it every day. Now I only drive it when I need it.
I learned a lot about EVs. First, it costs me less than $0.75 for a full charge, gets me 80-100 miles in town. Compared to $150/month for gas in the truck.
Maintenance. In 3 years I will have to rotate the tires 5-6 times, replace windshield wipers as needed, and maybe replace the brake fluid once. That's it. No other scheduled maintenance.
It drives like a very peppy car. Quick off the line, good acceleration, good handling. Most of the toys are standard (cruise, navigation, XM radio, limited voice activation, ability to monitor from smartphone apps, etc).
I leased because I expect the technology to change in the next 3 years, and expect this car to be almost worthless by then, but I don't care as I can just turn it in and decide what to do then. And I will still have my truck so there will be no rush.
Is it green? Maybe. Is that why I bought it? No, I bought it to save green. We have my wife's car for distance, my truck for hauling, this is just a cheap commuter car. cheaper to own, maintain and drive.
I'm in NC, our power comes from coal and nuclear.
If your goal is to reduce air pollution TODAY, then quite probably electric vehicles don't help.
If your goal is to shift the technology base of the entire transportation system toward renewable energy sources, then electric vehicles are necessary.
In other words, don't blame the electric vehicle. Blame the lack of wind turbines. Electric vehicles will run just fine whether the generators the powers them is driven by coal or by wind. In contrast, gasoline and diesel vehicles tie us down to fossil fuels indefinitely.
If you have a better plan for long-term control of carbon emissions than cutting our dependency on the internal combustion (and diesel) engine, I'd love to hear it.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
When judging electric vs gas vehicles I feel that electric cars rarely get a fair shake.
The institution of gas powered vehicles has very many externalized costs that people take for granted because, well, it's always been that way.
Fuel transportation - This is a huge hidden cost. The amount of hydrocarbons burned to provide the massive infrastructure to move fuel is staggering. It's often one of the highest costs of fuel production itself. Do studies take in account the energy cost to move oil, refine it, then move the refined fuel? I really think this is one of the biggest benefit of electric cars is that an electric energy distribution could be a lot more environmentally friendly. Granted, we'd need to beef up our electrical grid too.
Even if you're burning hydrocarbons to produce power, I still think electric vechiles are a lot more forward thinking. What is more efficient: Having lots of cars carry little powerplants around with them, and pay for the fuel to be moved out to service stations where they can access it? - Or move power production to a few large production centers (power plants) where efficiencies of scale can be captured. Not to mention that, in theory, you could capture and sequester carbon emissiosn at a powerplant. They're large and stay in one place. You can't realistically sequester carbon emissions from millions of tiny cars that move around all the time.
Of course the cynics will jump on this story and say "I told you so" like they do for everything. I'm starting to think that there are mostly only cynics left on Slashdot : /
But it's more sober to assess the value by looking at the long term impact. The technology will change as they become more popular and advancing battery technology will make batteries more efficient to produce. The *concept* of electric vehicles can produce a society that has less energy waste, and less pollution, even if the first generation of vehicles do not meet the goal.
With the understanding that electric vehicles will eventually (fairly quickly actually) have a positive impact, we can ignore the short term impact so that:
* Charging standards can be matured
* Charging stations can proliferate
* Battery technology can mature
* Motor technology can mature
* Laws can mature
Thank god the same group of cynics didn't get to have an effect on computer technology in it's infancy.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
When they recycle them, the impact drops MASSIVELY.
where the car was bundled w/ not just a special outlet, but a bank of batteries and solar array (say mounted on the garage).
I wonder if they took that into account, and the fact that vehicle production does use quite a bit of power, and a lot of vehicle manufacturers are now going out of their way to have renewable sources of power. There's also new lightweight manufacturing processes for cars, like the Graham Murray Design factory designs for the T.25 and T.27 cars. My own power mix is about 50% renewables and increasing that percentage. No, I don't have solar panels on my roof, and I don't personally own a wind turbine, hydro turbine, wave or tidal power; I just chose an ethical energy supplier that invests in renewable generation. I'm not driving an electric car, but I'm not intending to buy another new internal combustion engined car.
You do realize that just making gasoline takes a ton of electricity?
Electric cars don't use squat, use it more efficiently, and move all the pollution to single points that can be controlled much better than millions of cars.
Burning petrol or diesel might produce similar carbon dioxide to coal, but going from crude oil to the petrol pump takes a lot more effort (about 4 times that of coal).
Rocket Surgeon.
To me it seems that 5 million combustible engines can't be more efficient than 1 combustible engine (power plant, likely has higher efficiences) + electrical transport losses. Transporting electricity vs transporting fuel (which burns fuel!).
I just don't see how its a comparison?
Now I can drive my ICE in good conscience knowing that perpetual slavery to oil companies really is the best possible future any of us could hope for.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Modern EVs use mostly or entirely Li-ion, not lead-acid (which are terribly heavy and poor in energy density and would make for a terrible EV). Lithium batteries can be recycled so you have to look at the efficiency and pollution output of the recycling plant.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
One difference is if you buy a petrol/diesel car then it will carry on creating the same emissions for its life. With an electric car as we bring more renewables online, (maybe) bring back nuclear, and (maybe) look at carbon sequestration then the emissions become greener
That's because people don't understand how to do taxes. Stop electing these people!
It's dumb to tax pollution as a punitive measure, or to encourage/discourage the use of certain technologies or behaviors, or to raise general revenue.
It's smart to tax pollution to offset the public-born costs of the thing which is taxed.
Don't tax pollution to nudge people into abstaining from polluting; tax them whatever it costs to clean up their mess, and then spend that money to do just that. If someone is spewing greenhouse gasses, tax 'em to plant forests (or whatever, if you have a cheaper way to handle it) of the capacity needed to bind those gasses, and then actually do that (really plant the forests).
That alone may be enough to indirectly discourage them from polluting. Or maybe they'll pay to plant the forests themselves, since they can do it more efficiently (cheaper) than government contractors. Or if they're not discouraged: don't worry about it, because you got your offsetting forest and the pollution really did get handled.
If someone is spewing something harder to clean up, then use (and set) that tax to whatever it takes to deal with it. And if nobody has the magic or tech to deal with the pollutant, then the pollution (i.e. the liability) can't be paid for, so should be forcefully prohibited, rather than forgiven (i.e. subsidized at public expense).
Don't think in terms of saving the world; think in terms of turning externalities into actual liabilities.
Dependency isn't a problem if you handle taxes this way, because you don't use the pollution tax to pay for wars or Medicare or anything else which is unrelated to the tax. e.g. If people stop dumping CO2, then your forest-planting expenses just went down, so the demand for the revenue drops at the same time the supply does.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Incorrect finding is incorrect. Would not be surprised to find that the study was funded by some oil company exec.
Bottom line: EVs are orders of magnitude more efficient at energy use than combustion-powered vehicles. Even if the energy required to charge an electric vehicle comes from a polluting source, the vehicle is able to expend that energy much more efficiently (typically 80%-90% efficiency) than the energy produced via burning gasoline or diesel (typically 30%-40% efficiency). That means less total energy is required and thus less pollution generated per mile traveled, which is the whole point.
Are they perfectly clean? No. Neither is my "clean" diesel. They're still better options, regardless of the power generation method, where pollution is concerned.
The problem with the electric car is range. No one wants any vehicle they can use for 100 miles or so and then have to park it overnight to "fill up"/recharge. If they can figure out a way to get generators built in to recharge the batteries or even power the car itself... problem(s) solved.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
President is a Muslim born in Kenya?
Why do idiots believe such obviously stupid email forwards? Oh, right, because they're idiots.
jeez good thing we have these smart people telling us these things....
not like everyone who has a brain has been saying this since these stupid things appeared...
evironuts don't care, it's about image not reality...
Energy production tends to be more efficient and easier to mange pollution on when it's on a larger scale. When you have a random spread of vehicles between good new (low pollution, 35mpg) and say, MINE at 12mpg, the average pollution and inefficiency per mile is easily overcome by changing those fossil fuels into electricity in bulk at a power plant, and charging vehicles to drive.
Efficiency and pollution controls on all those individual cars is just a lot less effective and cheap than it is even at your local coal burning plant. So while yes, you are moving the pollution, I think you're also reducing it at the same time. Increasing efficiency also reduces pollution, less energy has to be produced (with the pollution it creates) when efficiency (both in production and use) is improved.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
That's all?!? Why didn't anyone else think of that? That would only cost about 100 trillion dollars and would dump a huge amount of carbon into the air (to tear down and then rebuild all human residences). Although one downside is that it is politically infeasible, mostly because it is so stupid.
You know what might be a good backup plan? Switch to electric cars (which are quite efficient at starting and stopping), encourage more telecommuting, and slowly make our electric power generation infrastructure more reliant on renewable or low-polluting energy sources.
If you're going to consider electrical transport losses, you also need to consider gasoline transport loss. (ie, how much fuel gets used by the truck delivering the fuel to the gas stations?)
The problem, of course, is that it's once again a question of location -- someone who's down the street from an oil refinery is going to be much different than someone who's not.
Personally, I don't drive a hybrid, but I know a fair bit about them as I helped to build a solar car in the late 1990s. The real advantage of hybrids and electrics come at low speeds and stop and go traffic; As I have a 20 mile commute on highways, I won't see the same benefit as someone who does all of their driving in the city, or something like a taxi, delivery vehicle, or bus. (where the frequent stops give regenerative breaking an even bigger advantage). Many people would be better off by just buying a smaller, lighter car.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I might be mistaken, but it seems like the driving profile of the EV user would matter as well. Consider someone who works in the middle of a metropolitan area, and lives in a small neighborhood ~10-15 miles away. If they spend the majority of their driving time in rush hour traffic, it seems like EVs would be more efficient because they don't waste as much energy when idle/stop-and-go traffic (ignoring things like A/C). Even if they were charged with power from a coal plant, they might still be more efficient. While city/highway EPA numbers work as an overall "average", the benefits of EVs would be greater for this type of driver.
For those interested there is a report from a few months ago on the same topic with a US centric view (PDF warning) that comes to a similar conclusion. The main difference is Europe has much higher standards for fuel efficiency (both in legislation and public preference) so there is less potential gain for GHG emissions reduction to start with. For example:
Use phase energy requirements were assumed to be 0.623 megajoules/kilometer (MJ/km) for the EV, 68.5 milliliter/kilometer (mL/km) for the gasoline ICEV, and 53.5 mL/km for the diesel ICEV
To break this down into units most of us are more familiar with:
Electric: 3.591 miles per Kilowatt-hour
Gasoline: 34.34 miles per US gallon
Diesel: 43.97 miles per US gallon
Anyone in the US driving a vehicle made for the US market and getting those MPG figures would be justified in being a tad smug about it. Electric efficiency also seems generously high - I usually figure 3.2 mi/kWh, or pessimistically 3.0 to make the math easier, which correlates fairly well with anecdotal "real-world" reports from EV owners across the country. (5, 6 or even 7 mi/kWh is not unheard of, though these are usually your hyper-miler type drivers.)
Notable omissions from this report are include the energy and environmental impacts of obtaining the fossil fuels for either case. For example there is mention of the energy required to refine and process the metals used in battery production but no mention of the energy required to extract, refine and transport petroleum fuels. There is no mention of extraction costs for coal and natural gas for electrical production either.
There are several mentions of aluminum costs for production of EV components but having worked with both EVs and ICEVs I'm fairly confident there is more aluminum in an ICEV. Most of the engine block, come of the internal engine components, and most or the transmission body are aluminum. They are correct that there is more copper in an EV however.
Fossil depletion potential (FDP)may be decreased by 25% to 36% with electric transportation relying on average European electricity. EVs with natural gas or coal electricity, however, do not lead to significant reductions.
Nobody sensible has been arguing that EVs are magical. However, they are even at worst equivalent to what we are doing now but with the added benefit of future-proofing. A diesel engine will always need diesel, bio- or otherwise. It will always need a carbon based fuel. Always. An electric vehicle can get its electricity from carbon and non-carbon based sources alike. This means the bar to reducing fossil fuel use is dramatically lowered with the electrification of our vehicles.
tl:dr; Electrified vehicles are still a winning proposition despite not being perfect.
=Smidge=
That's neo-con disinformation, operating at several levels, that is being distributed by marketing organizations like CNW. Not only is it factually incorrect, it also implies CO2 is the most significant car exhaust pollution issue, which it certainly isn't, and ignores the fact that auto batteries are recycled (in the USA) at a rate exceeding 95%.
There's also the issue of "service life". We all heard the stories of how buying a new Prius battery would cost more than the car, and we'd have to do it every three years - yet I have 130,000+ miles on my ten year old battery pack and it has had zero maintenance and zero problems. Other people have gone 300,000 miles with no issues. Good quality electric motors, such as the traction motors in Japanese hybrids, have a 40 year service life before rebuilding - and if the bearings are replaced at the first sign of heat or noise brushless motors can last over a hundred years. I have an 80 year old electric fan in my house (it has hand-wound coils and hand-cut steel gears in the oscillating mechanism) and it works better than modern plastic chinese-made fans - pushes more air and uses less energy, because it's extremely well made. Service life estimates based on worst-case fantasies of hybrid haters are clearly not realistic.
Again, this is factually incorrect. Even if you accept the ridiculous definitions of pollution and service life, it's still just plain not true, and has been repeatedly debunked in peer-reviewed literature and in journals. Of course the Wall Street Journal and Fox News will keep repeating absurd anti-environment propaganda forever, but those are not reality-based news sources.
Add $8500 to the price of every electric car and package with it 5Kw of china solar panels. Problem solved.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
According to figure 1 in the study.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x/full#f1
The environmental impact of the battery production is more about other factors than energy used. From the figure freshwater eco-toxicity (FETP), mineral resource depletion (MDP), human toxicity (HTP), and terrestrial acidification (TAP) are the largest impact items from battery production. So maybe a little too much attention is being put on the energy use, which is represented by global warming (GWP) and is a relatively small part of the production "impact".
From the article:
Considering how the potential problem shifts mostly arise from material requirements of EV production, effective recycling programs and improved EV lifetimes would constitute an appropriate first response.
This is the conclusion I came to. Most of the impact is not energy use, but other environmental factors, which can be addressed.
Electric vehicles for everyone powered by nuclear power are a complete zero emission system, no matter how many cars you have.
Bullshit. Your emissions are in the form of nuclear waste, which has to be stored for HUNDREDS of years in nuclear containment.
With every form of energy production that requires a fuel to produce that energy, there are emissions. Coal: carbon; Nuclear: nuclear waste, irradiated water; Diesel/gasoline: carbon.
Wind energy requires no fuel as it harnesses already existing energy and converts it to another form. The same goes for hydroelectric and solar. You also need to consider the reliability of wind, solar and hydroelectric. While abundant, they are not constant or reliable.
The real solution is hydrogen, but big oil, the government and auto manufacturer execs won't let that happen because there are too many profits to be made by kicking the can down the road. Hydrogen is so abundant and obscenely cheap that they'll never turn a multi-billion dollar annual profit on it, and if business incomes are low, along with a low fuel price, the government cant raise any revenue to line the pockets of the bureaucrats or feed the kickbacks to the auto execs who don't give a damn what's powering it as long as they're selling cars and getting their kickbacks.
...when you consider the other benefits such as energy independence and the price of electricity vs. the price of gasoline. Electricity is many times less expensive than gasoline, and can be produced here by a variety of methods, some of them even environmentally friendly. And before our envirowacko contingent goes off praising Europe and denigrating coal and so forth, they should examine their own role in preventing the squeaky-clean nuclear power that France mostly uses to get their electricity so clean.
The thing to do is to produce the electric cars now, and work on reducing the emissions of power generation as soon as possible. The best solution for the present is probably solar-thermal, which can even store solar energy overnight in the form of molten salt, and could possibly be viable if we can, once again, kick the envirowackos in the teeth and build the necessary power distribution necessary to get such electricity to where its needed, as well as get the land on which to build it freed up from the envirowackos in Congress (Nancy Pelosi, et. al.) that have tried to make some parts of the Mojave unavailable by law from development for solar power.
According to the link you provided the theoretical max is ~73% . The 35% you cite is the average we are doing now.
insert inflammatory comment here!
I have to wonder how long an EV will last, and I mean everything else *other* than the battery. Can you imagine a 10-year old, high mileage 1st gen Prius or Leaf? Nickel and Dime? More like Gold and Platinum. Lastly, I wonder how well junk yards (sorry; Automotive Recyclers) can break down and process EVs - and how much heavy metals and toxins will escape into the environment.
I would like to think it would be easier to capture/convert/sequester emissions at a group of fixed power plants instead of a mobile, distributed cloud.
Just because the net impact of an electric may not be as good as it can be, does not mean its not worth shifting.
Every industry develops through economy of scale, and any incremental step towards electric is far better than
staying on combustion engines. So yes, work on making the cars cleaner, but don't pretend its an excuse NOT
to get an electric.
They dare speak of envrionmental impact of production when electric vechicles done right (wheel hub motors) can get away with a much reduced bill of materials vs ice counterparts. What is the environmental impact whenever a transmission is produced?
The other argument against ICE being your electricity comes from coal anyway so it does not matter. BS industrial scale production is much more effecient than the little shit engines in our vechicles.
That statement doesn't make a lick of sense to me.
I don't know anything about how gasoline is made, other than it needs to be pumped out of the ocean/ground, shipped around, refined in huge plants, and then shipped to the final destination such as the corner gas station.
So, making gasoline and providing it to market creates a lot of pollution I'd assume. Not only does making it pollute, but transporting it pollutes again, and then lastly using it driving around pollutes.
How is that less worse than manufacturing electricity (at one location, be it hydropower or coal, whatever) and shipping it via power lines to the distribution source (the plug at your home). No pollution shipping the product around, and no pollution while you drive.
The 20lb figure comes from a very simplistic high school chemistry calculation. A better figure is 24lb per gallon of gasoline.
Doing the math again, the LEAF gets 37.5mpg. On the worst power source in the US it is still beating just about everything.
I seriously have to doubt a Norwegian based study that (surprise, surprise) discovers that fossil fuels are more environmentally friendly than Electric motors - its just slightly less surprising than this study coming from say a Saudi based institution or Jeremy Clarkson...
Didn't mean to make that an AC post. Been so long since I posted here ;-)
Here's the link to the DoE study on EV road wheel efficiency I took the figure from. Hint: it's 24lb's of COe
Just do it. Mother Government will move your bloated sick ass from one place to another, citizen. Now line up for your internal passports.
Let's mine dangerous materials, assemble them carelessly, build polluting power plants, string inefficient transmission systems, produce heavy and inefficient batteries as fuel stores, and make Joe Greenie feel responsible as he drives his "pollution-free" electric car. One wonders what the multitudes buying electric cars any way will be called - "Reality Deniers" perhaps?
I don't get why people have this huge obsession with hydrogen. Hydrogen is a battery, that is all. It is a way of storing energy to be used later. But, it is an inefficient battery. To get it into a compact form that is practical for storage requires very high pressures (~10,000psi), which require a lot of energy to create. And it has to be very pure to not degrade the fuel cell you are using to create electricity from and. And then you have to make sure that the containment vessel doesn't explode in an accident (or just if it gets old). And all the associated dangers of filling it up from a filling station with high pressure.
And in actuality big oil DOES want hydrogen to be the replacement for oil. With an electric car you can go home and plug it in (and plug it in at work if you can get a hook-up). You could drive 50 miles every day and never go to a "gas" station. But you aren't going to produce hydrogen at home. Once every week or two you are going to go to the "gas" station to fill up on hydrogen. And some company (most likely ones that already have the distribution network in place for other fuels - like oil) will provide the hydrogen to that "gas" station. And the government can tax and control it. And financial types can manipulate the price of it as they do with oil.
And as I said, hydrogen is just a battery. So you still need to use an energy source to create it. So, if it is made from coal (or made from electricity produced from coal), it is still not environmentally friendly. I can see fuel cells in our future being used to convert biofuels (or even fossil fuels to begin with) to electricity at with high efficiency (>60%). But I just cannot see any advantage to the "hydrogen economy", not even considering how much capital and resources will necessary to convert our current "fossil fuel economy" to a "hydrogen economy".
The concept is fundamentally broken on many levels. You lay out practical problems, and there are also problems of authoritarianism. You define what constitutes a "sin" and you get to punish the wayward followers and unbelievers for committing the sin. Someone once said the purpose of a tax is to raise revenue, and its promotion or use for any other purpose is inherently wrong in a free society.
CONSIDER RUSH OUR TRAFFIC IN THE MORNING AND EVENINGS. EV(Electric Vehicles) Creates more jobs in the country if LAWS are written properly. Regular non EV engines creates 14 TONS up to 20 TONS of CO2 per gallon. How many gallons of gas do you use per week? How many cars are on the road & highways every day? If your car does 18 miles per GALLON that would be 20 TONS of CO2 per 18 miles. What if an average American drives 16,000 miles per year and the total miles driven by Americans per year?
There is more than 230 million cars in the USA and according to the U.S. Department of Transpotation Statistical Records Office there are approximately 62 million registered vehicles.
Conservative Example:
*excluding (52 weeks per year), (total cars greater than 62 million cars), (Total miles driven (Semi-trucks, off-road vehicles, cars, etc), (actual tank size)
(62 million cars) x (16 gallons maximum tank) x (45 weeks per year) = 44640 x (20 Tons of CO2 per gallon) = more than 89,280 million tons of CO2 per year.
*Hybrid 65 mpg and EV(Electric Vehicles) is the solution for job growth and reducing the GREEN HOUSE GAS. SAVING TONS OF CO2 DURING RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC AND DRIVING AT LOW SPEEDS around schools 15 MPH and around neighborhoods 25 MPH, etc.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7350
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_cars_are_currently_in_the_US
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml
http://www.stewartmarion.com/carbon-footprint/html/carbon-footprint-car.html
Scientific American covered the same topic a few months back. The article primarily focused on the U.S. but agrees with TFA. There is a link on the sidebar of the Scientific American article to a nice interactive presentation on "where you live determines whether your plug-in is better for the environment."
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Actually, the BBC headline "Electric cars 'pose environmental threat'" is a load of bull. It does not jive with the actual text of the article which makes various balanced statements including:
" We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km."
and
"An assumption of 100,000 km decreases the benefit of EVs to 9% to 14% with respect to gasoline vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle. "
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x/full
Anyway, shifting the pollution to the grid makes it easier to switch to green sources such as wind, solar, and the thorium reactor that people are talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw
Sit under a lightning storm with a gold club pointing out as my car antenna.......and wait.......
Charge me up Scotty!
It is counterproductive to promote electric vehicles in regions where electricity is primarily produced from lignite, coal or even heavy oil combustion.
How can it possibly be counterproductive to get everyone, even in coal areas, using EVs? It means that the second that coal plant changes for the better, or is replaced at some point in the future, every car along with it improves instantly. If the cars were still combustion, it would take a decade or more for those cars to cycle out of production.
A simple change to ICE would tip the balance in the cities. Stop the engines at traffic lights, and use a better designed starter motor to get them going when the lights change. Works well for diesel engines.
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Oh one of the "hydrogen is just a battery" trolls. It's not that it's just one of the most abundant substances in the universe, it's that you can burn it without releasing poisonous fumes. And it's far safer than gasoline. Don't worry about generating it, once it becomes a popular fuel innovation will take care of the rest.
Sure most private vehicles will become electric, where 400km is enough on a single charge then you plug it in over-night. However for long-range vehicles hydrogen is a perfectly good solution. If you can't see any advantage to the "hydrogen economy" try going on holiday to LA, Bejing, Mexico City, etc.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Oh one of the "hydrogen is just a battery" trolls.
Troll? How am I trolling? Disagreeing with you is not "trolling". Do you think that hydrogen is an exploitable energy source? Because all of the proposals that I have heard are either generating it from water with electrolysis (and since the end result of burning hydrogen is water, you go complete circle) or creating it from fossil fuels. If you are creating it from fossil fuels you might as well store the fossil fuel and convert it just before putting it in a fuel cell, so there is no hydrogen economy. If you have heard of some way of actually using hydrogen as an energy source, then please let me know.
It is true that it is one of the most abundant substances in the universe. But most of it on earth has already burned (combined with oxygen - water). Once we start colonies in space, then we probably will build a hydrogen economy. But it is not practical on earth.
And, it is true that gaseous hydrogen is generally more safe than gasoline mainly because it dissipates too quickly (because it is too light) to explode, but my biggest concern is not it spontaneously combusting. I would not want to drive around my car with a canister of a noble gas (read non-combustible) under 10,000psi riding next to me in the car. Much less a combustible one.
Batteries are improving at a rapid rate. You can quick charge a battery in 15 minutes. That is about how long it takes to stop at a fast food restaurant and have a meal. And, everywhere has electricity. No matter where you go you will be able to recharge your car. The same cannot be said for hydrogen. LPG is a reasonable fuel that is cheap and burns pretty clean. But, you almost never see propane cars on the road because there is nowhere to fill them up. I just do not see hydrogen cars becoming common enough so that there are enough "hydrogen stations" to make hydrogen cars practical. Sure, in my electric car I might have to stop for the evening to charge up after my 400km. But, what do you do once your 400km are up? Knock on someones door and ask if you can borrow their garden hose (and an electrical outlet) to electrolyze some water?
So, no. I do not see any advantage to the "hydrogen economy". Ten years ago I was all for it. But then I started looking at the details and realized it was over-hyped and over-sold. I have been to L.A. I did not see the hydrogen economy (I wasn't looking for it, though - maybe I missed it). Can't afford to go to Bejing or Mexico City. So, unless you want to pay for me to fly there, then I will just have to hope that you can provide me with facts (any facts would be nice) that can convince me of the advantages of your "hydrogen economy".
When I posted a submission about a study that showed exactly these facts it was rejected. That was two years ago when everyone was jumping on the 'yay electric cars are the way of the future' bandwagon. Way to filter the news to fit your current paradigm.
Here is how:
Firstly it takes more than a decade for a coal power station to get replaced, a lot more.
Secondly the difference between modern 'clean' coal plants and their older variants both in terms of thermal efficiency and co2 output is about 5%, and future technology being worked on does not show any promise of pushing that much further than another 5% at best. This is discluding co2 sequestration as that can be done on an ICE as well as a power station and is not really a viable solution on either. The difference in thermal efficiency between a modern efficient ICE powered car and an equivalent electric car powered exclusively by coal plants burning lignite is far above that amount. I don't remember the exact figures but I believe the lignite EV used about 25% more energy and produced up to double the pollution of the ICE.
If your goal is to reduce air pollution TODAY, then quite probably electric vehicles don't help. If your goal is to shift the technology base of the entire transportation system toward renewable energy sources, then electric vehicles are necessary. In other words, don't blame the electric vehicle. Blame the lack of wind turbines. Electric vehicles will run just fine whether the generators the powers them is driven by coal or by wind. In contrast, gasoline and diesel vehicles tie us down to fossil fuels indefinitely. If you have a better plan for long-term control of carbon emissions than cutting our dependency on the internal combustion (and diesel) engine, I'd love to hear it. astore.amazon.com/garmin.1450lmt.portable.gps.navigator-20 agree the comment above.
'Coal shock' is not something one ever hears. The first and foremost reason for electric is to move away from a situation where an Iranian deputy minister can eat a bad burrito and send energy prices skyrocketing. We can sort the hows of electricity production later.
However, (and I don't know the answer or the full math, but I'm asking) doesn't
_
fuel in diesel internal combustion engine -> \times ratio_1
mechanical rotation of alternator shaft -> \times ratio_2
generation of electrical output -> \times ratio_3
intermediate storage in electro-chemical battery potential -> \times ratio_4
rotation of electric motor -> \times ratio_5 mechanical linkage to wheels
_
create five fractions multiplied together decreasing efficiency
_
while automatic transmission:
fuel in diesel internal combustion engine -> \times ratio_b_1
mechanical rotation of torque input shaft -> \times ratio_b_2
friction rotation of transmission fluid -> \times ratio_b_3
friction rotation of torque output shaft -> \times ratio_b_4
mechanical linkage to wheels
_
while manual transmission has the least loss and best efficiency:
fuel in diesel internal combustion engine -> \times ratio_c_1
mechanical rotation of engine output shaft -> \times ratio_c_2
friction contact of clutch to output shaft-> \times ratio_c_3
mechanical linkage to wheels
_
Of course, the efficiency and loss ratios at each level matter, and probably vary non-linearly at different velocities/RPMs, so only actually running the vehicles will tell you the results, but my guess is that the manual transmission with a good driver (not over-revving, not terrible and shifting with the clutch at the rifht times) is probably the most efficient process. Your costs and mileage may vary, of course. ;>)
You've oversimplified the problem. In particular, you're not accounting for the wide range of efficiencies an ICE will display depending on different possible RPM/load combinations. The efficiency of a conventional vehicle will vary widely with driving conditions. You can design the transmission so that the engine is at its peak efficiency at, say, 55mph, but then what happens with city driving? In real world driving conditions a conventional vehicle spends only a small portion of its time running at that ideal RPM. Also, with a conventional vehicle, every last drop of fuel that is burnt while idling (sitting at a stoplight) is completely wasted.
With an electric vehicle, the ICE can run at its absolute peak efficiency 100% of the time that it is running. If the engine is running while sitting at a stoplight, the output is stored in batteries for later use, so every drop of fuel it consumes is used, not wasted.
Assuming that you're using current technology for both engines (no comparing a 2012 diesel car to a generator built in 1965), then in real world applications the electric vehicle should always come out ahead. It would be possible to construct a test scenario where the results were very close, but that wouldn't reflect the way people actually use their vehicles.
TLDR; Your equations fail to account for lots of factors that come into play during real world driving.
Also,
friction contact of clutch to output shaft-> \times ratio_c_3
If you're losing non-trivial amounts of power in the clutch, get your car to a mechanic. Either the clutch plate or pressure plate is shot.
There shouldn't be any frictional losses whatso-ever in the clutch when constantly in one gear. What do you know about CVTs in terms of power efficiency?
I could not find anywhere in the paper mention of electricity consumption of refining, it seems to take only two things to account, pump-to-wheel for ICE, and generation-to-wheel for electrics, and then add on top of that energy consumption of making the car. Do I read it correctly? If yes, this is not exactly scientific.
At least in the US, refining consumes approximately the amount of electricity used by electric car for the whole distance, which makes it pretty hard for any ICE using gasoline or diesel to compete in energy/pollution ratio with electric cars, unless making the electric car would consume hugely more energy than making a ICE car. I cannot see that very likely, as ICE car will gobble huge amounts of energy during its lifetime (my oldish lexus uses approximately 4000 litres of gasoline, or about 1000 Gallons, per year, for approximately 30000km I drive yearly! This equates more than 10000kg of CO2).
From quick google around, making a car seems to produce 6-20kg of CO2 per kg, lets assume that a normal car production is 10000kg or CO2 and electric 20000kg, so the difference is 10000kg of CO2. Which seems to be 1-2 years of CO2 emissions of a typical driver?
For gas cars, the amount of CO2 produced by making the car itself will be around 5-10% of amount of CO2 it will puff out during its useful lifetime. For electric cars, the ratio is different, but mostly due to fact that electric car is much more efficient when used, so larger part of its lifetime CO2 production relates to manufacturing it. If comparing to an ICE car, it will break even quickly and save huge amounts of energy from then on. There is no way a gasoline car could match electric at use, as ICE already consumed the same amount of electricity before it is even filled up, due to electricity used at the refinery.
And if you put the savings on gasoline into installing a beefy solar installation on your roof, you won't make pretty much any CO2 after panel CO2 debt is paid (approximately 1 year). And, then, drive for free, besides, which is a notable benefit for most people. Two years savings on gasoline buys me a 4kW solar system, which gives me some 60-80 km per day, enough for all my city driving, and probably leaves some extra kWh for other stuff.
"Plug it in over-night" <- this is a problem. That means that only people that own their own homes, or have very accommodating landlords can ever own an electric vehicle. The solution is a charging infrastructure on par with the gasoline infrastructure. However, it takes 510kW to charge a 85kWh battery to full from empty in 10 minutes. Keep in mind that the "charge" rate for gasoline pumps is 167MW.
That being said, I agree that Hydrogen is another solution to the problem, the "charge" rate can be as high as 2MW, which is sufficient to compete with gasoline, but at 700 bar would require a 30 gallon tank.
He effected a bored affect.
Fact : Norway is the world’s third largest oil exporter. It has still over 40% of its oil to exploit. This should tell you why electric cars are no good for their business and why this research was initiated.
Fact: Even in its worst case scenario, electric cars are better for the lungs and health of millions of people living in congested urban areas.