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8 US States Pushing For 3.3 Million Electric Cars
An anonymous reader writes "A coalition of eight U.S. states, including New York and California, have announced a plan to get 3.3 million zero-emission electric vehicles onto their roads by 2025. 'The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.' An editorial in Quartz says that while the initiative itself is fine, the states should really take cues from Tesla if they want to plan out an infrastructure that will convince people to switch. ' For longer distances, [Tesla drivers] can stop at "Supercharger" stations strategically placed along highways that let them add 150 miles of range in as little as 20 minutes. Currently, [government] money is being spent on installing much-slower chargers at stores, shopping malls and other urban locations in the hope that drivers will use them. Tesla says it will blanket the US with its Superchargers for a fraction of the cost, because it studies the driving patterms of its customers and installs charging stations only where they tend to travel. This isn't hard; most other electric cars also record their drivers' habits. If privacy concerns could be addressed and automakers would be willing to share that data with government transportation planners, the rollout of public charging stations could be more targeted and cash-efficient.'"
Large fossil-fuel power plants can be made a lot more efficient than internal-combustion engines, even counting transmission and distribution losses (especially if you count distribution costs for gasoline). Running a car on energy from the electric grid is greener than running on gasoline, even if your power comes from coal plants -- and in most places, not all grid power is derived from coal.
Yes, they are still sub-optimal for long road trips. However, as long as you can get a full day of normal driving in on a single charge, and recharge overnight in your own garage the picture looks much better, especially as a primary car where the second car where the other is gasoline powered. Weight it largely irrelevant to most people - once you can't pick it up it's just one more factor in the efficiency and performance characteristics. And cost, well that is what it is for now, the early adopters always pay a premium.
As someone said "There's nothing wrong with electric cars that batteries with twice the capacity at half the cost wouldn't fix", and there's plenty of promising new battery technologies on the horizon, we just need one of them to make it out of the lab.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Running a car on energy from the electric grid is greener than running on gasoline, even if your power comes from coal plants
To put some numbers to this, the EPA says that the average car emits 423 grams of CO2 per mile, and that the average US coal plant emits 1216 lb (551 kg) of CO2 per megawatt-hour produced, which is 551 g per kwh. My Nissan LEAF gets about four miles per kwh. Assuming pure coal power, and ignoring line losses, that means my car causes 138 grams of CO2 to be emitted per mile I drive.
Now, the LEAF is a very small, very efficient car, significantly more efficient than most gasoline-powered cars (mainly for range reasons). So comparing 138 to 423 straight up isn't a fair comparison, but even if you assume a normal car is half as efficient as the LEAF, it's still 276 grams per mile vs 423 grams per mile. Throw in some line losses and the gap closes further... but it's pretty clear that electric vehicles cause less CO2 production than gasoline vehicles, on a per-mile basis, even if all of the electricity comes from coal.
For me it's even better because although Colorado is primarily coal-powered, I mostly charge my car only at the office, and my employer (Google) pays a little extra to buy "green" power, mostly wind and hydro, I think. So my car's carbon footprint is much lower. This highlights another aspect of electric vehicles: if we switch to EVs (where appropriate -- they don't work for everything), it is at least possible to replace coal generation with something cleaner. Wind, hydro, wave, solar, nuclear, geothermal... there are lots of clean ways to generate electricity.
I should also note that I, personally, don't care that much. I bought a LEAF not because I was anxious to save the planet, but because it's cheaper to own and operate than a gasoline-powered car, at least for my driving patterns. The fact that it's cleaner is a pleasant bonus. It's also a lot of fun to drive because electric motors have awesome torque and I love how quiet it is. It's a great little car, and I'm very happy with my decision to buy it (lease it, actually... I think EV tech is changing fast enough right now that there's value in being able to upgrade regularly).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
10 m2 * 150 W/m2 * 8 h/day / (150 Wh/km) = 80 km/day. (*)
That covers the average commute quite nicely some of the time. In winter or inclement weather, not so much.
Still, the smugness of travelling gratis - abstracting investments - is seducing.
(*) Conversion to other units, including but not limited to BTU, miles (your pick), square feet and 1/32nds of a fortnight left as an exercise for the reader.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
You can run the Tesla Model S on the amount of electricity used to refine the gasoline for an equivalent car. Or put another way: a gasoline car uses as much electricity as pure electric, PLUS the gasoline.
"Chris: It's funny they make that argument, because they're one of the largest users of electricity in the country, to refine gasoline. That's why the power cords go into refineries. Something like 4 to 6 kilowatt hours of electricity to refine every gallon of gasoline. They're pulling that electricity from the same source as they're critiquing on electric cars and they get much less result out of it.
Elon: Exactly. Chris has a nice way of saying it which is, you have enough electricity to power all the cars in the country if you stop refining gasoline. You take an average of 5 kilowatt hours to refine gasoline, something like the Model S can go 20 miles on 5 kilowatt hours. You basically have the energy needed to power electric vehicles if you stop refining.
BI: 5 kilowatt hours, that's to refine and transport one gallon of gas?
Elon: Chris, does that include transportation?
Chris: I think it's just refining. It does not include transporting it from the Middle East or Venezuela. The more efficient your refinery is, the lower that number is. The lowest number in the DOE study I read was 4, and the highest was 7, it depends on what your refinery is."
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-and-chris-paine-explain-how-the-electric-car-got-its-revenge-2011-10
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