Slashdot Mirror
Electric Cars Emit 50 Percent Less Greenhouse Gas Than Diesel, Study Finds (theguardian.com)
entirely_fluffy shares a report from The Guardian: Electric cars emit significantly less greenhouse gases over their lifetimes than diesel engines even when they are powered by the most carbon intensive energy, a new report has found. In Poland, which uses high volumes of coal, electric vehicles produced a quarter less emissions than diesels when put through a full lifecycle modeling study by Belgium's VUB University. CO2 reductions on Europe's cleanest grid in Sweden were a remarkable 85%, falling to around one half for countries such as the UK. The new study uses an EU estimate of Poland's emissions -- at 650gCO2/kWh -- which is significantly lower than calculations by the European commission's Joint Research Centre science wing last year. The VUB study says that while the supply of critical metals -- lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite -- and rare earths would have to be closely monitored and diversified, it should not constrain the clean transport transition. As battery technology improves and more renewables enter the electricity grid, emissions from battery production itself could be cut by 65%, the study found.
Where are you getting your figures? Because the last time I looked at this, Lithium batteries are around 99% efficient.
http://batteryuniversity.com/l...
BEV vehicles are far more energy efficient than ICE vehicles because the ICEs are at best 30% efficient. And then there is regeneration.
Yes, but it would be nice if you included some actual facts in your post.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Cars are typically far less than 30% efficient. As the previous poster stated the Carnot cycle limits the efficiency. There are also significant losses in the transmission, something that electric vehicles lack other than simple gear reduction. The transmission on an EV is far more efficient than a transmission for an internal combustion vehicle. For example, in my EV there are only two physical gears for a 9.73:1 gear reduction. Compare this to a typical transmission in an ICE vehicle. There is no clutch, torque converter, etc. It's a one-speed transmission with far lower losses than any multi-gear transmission or even a planetary gear assembly, which many hybrid transmissions use. While hybrids, and especially plug-in hybrids improve the efficiency by allowing the engine to operate in its most efficient mode with regenerative braking, it still falls far short of what an EV achieves. The battery losses for an EV are actually quite low. Good lithium-ion batteries are extremely efficient at storing electricity. In fact, there's a direct correlation to their efficiency and how long they'll last as is described in this video.
Also, at least in the United States, the use of coal for power generation is dropping significantly due to the lower cost of natural gas power plants and wind (regardless of what the politicians do). What this means is that the efficiency of EVs is increasing as coal usage drops since natural gas power plants tend to be more efficient and release around half the CO2 of an equivalent coal plant.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
The first diesel engine ran on peanut oil. in fact, diesel fuel does grow on trees
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13