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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.
That study is a eco-warrier lie. Even cars burning coal direckly produce less Carbon Die Oxyde then cars burning soler pannels.
Stop giving my money to soler greeny SJW warriers and you are not going to get my gasoline car until you Prius from my cold dead hans.
Hail a Murka! We are Nummer One!!!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It's cool that you......believe.....that but there's a study here that shows otherwise. Maybe you'd at least like to give some reasoning to back up your assertion? If you do, that would be interesting (implying that your current comment is lacking interest).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Carbon capture in a centralized production location like coal plants is much more efficient than in distributed consumer cars. That efficiency comes at significant capital cost but that is part of running the plant itself. Regardless of how energy is generated, the promise of EV transportation etc. is precisely that the pollution is more concentrated in production both for the energy and for the vehicle. Both cases are much easier to control and filter to avoid environmental damage that kills people and damages property.
Your ICE requires a lot of energy to find oil, extract it, transport it to refineries, refine it, transport it again, then gets burned in your car/truck.
If that study is well made, they included all the steps on both sides, EV and ICE.
#DeleteFacebook
Are you trying to impugn the veracity of an Anonymous Coward? That is offensive, sir, and you owe the entire non-study-reading population an apology.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Most of those aren't facts but bad estimates without any context on models, age, etc. Every other part is also wrong considering the actual proven facts about the environmental damage from NO chemistry - acid rain, acidification of lakes, oceans, streams, and every other open water source including those for direct human consumption in waste water treatment centers. Then on the nuclear angle, the decades of construction required and the massive investment required make them less useful than every other power plant, including coal itself in terms of economics. And coal has such horrible costs that every other plant is better than it.
It follows pretty obviously that as countries clean up their power grid, electric vehicles become a better idea. The data shown in this paper, though, does not indicate that electric vehicles are cleaner to use compared to diesel or gasoline cars in every EU country. The reference data from the linked paper is from 2013, but this "old" paper was only published three months ago, not last year. In three months, we now have updated data? That's great, and it makes sense that electricity is cleaner today than four years ago, but where is that new data? Are we talking about a newspaper article or another peer reviewed publication? This is a horrible summary.
Because that 25 year old 4-cylinder has terrible safety features.
Well, his car is 19 years old, so lets go with that. 19 years ago we had seat belts, crumple zones, airbags, ABS brakes, and some even had traction control. Those have been the major safety advances.
Most of the rest of the "safety features" like lane departure, rear and front sensors, automatic braking, etc. are almost purely for distracted and poor drivers (People who really should not have a license). Yes, these newer features add to the the overall safety. But if you've been a safe driver for 19 years (the fact that he has owned the same car for 19 years is a good indication) then it's highly unlikely that a newer vehicle would make him a safer driver than he already is.
Remember, it's not the car that you need to trust, it's your fellow driver. Even when full automation takes over some driving situations, you'll still have to trust that "Hal 9000" doesn't have a bug in it's driving routine.... (grin)
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!
And you seem to have the facts around NOx and Methane back to front:
http://www.ghgonline.org/metha...
"However, our emissions of other atmopsheric pollutants, such as nitrogen oxide (NOx) gases (see NOx page) may reduce the levels of OH radicals in our atmopshere, so prolonging the lifetime of methane in our atmosphere.,"
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
So I'm from The Netherlands and I've had the chance to drive a Renault Zoe now, for a couple of times. Its range is 400 km (250 mi). My commute is 66 km (41 mi) one-way. Parts of that, I can drive 130 km (81 mi) per hour, so I turn off "eco mode" and just set the cruise control to 136 km/h or so. So if you drive like that, the effective range in a modest Autumn is about 180 km, or much more if you stick to 100 km/h (60 mi/h). With this range, I have no range anxiety whatsoever. I just don't give a shit and drive. And it's very silent inside. Personally, I think it's magnificent.
Can anyone comment on whether the Renault Zoe is available in the US? I guess you guys just get the Bolt, right?
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
There is a horizontal red line in the graph for gasoline ICE reference.
178 gCO2eq/km is equivalent to 30.65 mpg (US gallons) according to this conversion site
Verily my good man. I apologize for the converse of the contrapositive of what I said.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Fig 3 shows how GHG emissions from the use of EVs varies across the EU: while in Sweden the use of BEV would produce only 7–9 gCO2eq/km, in Latvia EVs emit 169–234 gCO2eq/km and the EU average is 65–89 gCO2eq/km (the first number of these intervals refer to the 14.5 kWh/100 km BEV while the second to the 20.0 kWh/100 km BEV). According to these figures, the use of BEV in countries relying on big shares of nuclear or renewable electricity would contribute to reducing GHG emissions at the national level, while, in countries with a highly carbon-intense electricity mix, electric cars would not necessarily contribute to GHG emission reduction targets than relying on ICE vehicle fleets.
tl;dr the paper itself says if your country has clean energy then electric vehicles are cleaner than diesels, whereas if you have dirty energy, like much of the USA or worse, India, electric vehicles are a wash.
Id add that looking at fig3 it also looks like the worst countries would benefit more CO2 wise from hybrids than electrics at least in the short term till the power isn't so dirty.
Actually, it's not a comparison of purely coal generated electricity. They use the combined CO2 emissions for all the power generation methods in each EU nation. There's a lot of nuclear, wind and solar used in Western Europe.
If you look at the figures for some the the eastern European nations, the EV is about the same as the reference ICE figures.
Thanks.
Actually, the newer car (2006 Lexus) does indeed have traction control. The 19-year old Acura has the rest of the safety features you mentioned minus the traction control (meaning it's actually a lot more fun to drive!) but I digress.
My argument isn't even about the safety features, sure, most idiots nowadays can't look up from their phone long enough to successfully pilot the automobile. I'm just talking about the pure carbon-cost of crushing old used cars to force people into a $500 a month payment for a new one to prop up the domestic automakers! How many "Carbon"-MPG does that subtract from the overall cost of operation just because we had to manufacture a whole new automobile?
But you're 100% correct. I know how to deal with a drunk weaving around the road when I come across one. You overtake and get way ahead before he can fuck you up! I have a pretty good idea what a drunk is going to do, but I have no idea what the failure mode of the "Hal 9000" is going to be.
Indeed. Particularly has Diesel is a hydrocarbon, and so half of its bonds are to hydrogen, not carbon-carbon. Coal power stations are pretty efficient, but so are modern ICEs. Plus there are transmission and battery losses for EV.
As a chemist, I can tell you the first half of your comment makes no sense at all. Methane is an hydrocarbon, none of its bonds are carbon-carbon (since it only has one carbon atom) and it still produces CO2. In fact, you'd have to go to a pretty unsaturated hydrocarbon to have half and half (e.g. benzene which no one wants in a fuel because it's carcinogenic). So what's your point with that?
I probably shouldn't have kept reading, but I did. The rest makes pretty little sense either. ICEs are anything but efficient. The Carnot cycle limits their efficiency and even a quick look at Wikipedia will show that engines suck. They mention most engines have an average of "18%-20% efficiency" with Formula 1 engines having up to 47% efficiency. Of course, GM isn't going to sell you a cheap car with a F1 engine... In contrast, electric engines have a much higher efficiency, around 90%. Sure, there are some battery losses, but you're going against an engine that wastes 80% of the energy of the fuel, how hard do you have to make it? As for transmission losses does your ICE car roll without one of those?
So the question is... do you actually believe the stuff you say?
yes, some 5 percent (f'rom 1 link i googled : https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... ) . but LESS than the loss in ICE from engine to wheel. (I heard 15% as a rule of thumb)
HOWEVER++ they are talking diesels. DIESEL ENGINES ARE ACTUALLY GREENHOUSE NEGATIVE! WTF you say?
The danger from diesel is albedo. Soot in ice and snow from causes the ground to reflect less solar radiation and therefore retain more heat. Diesel exhaust emits a lot of soot and is therefore a major contributor to this process.
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.
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He pulled his figures from his backend. The efficiency of an internal combustion engine isn't the whole story. There are also very significant losses in the transmission needed in order to use said ICE. This has been analyzed over and over again and the EV almost always comes out on top, especially as coal makes up a smaller and smaller percentage of power generation. Hybrid vehicles improve the efficiency but as far as I know nobody makes a hybrid diesel-electric passenger vehicle.
The differences between diesel and electric vehicles are far more than 10%, especially when this moves to large vehicles such as in this CARB study comparing battery electric trucks compared to conventional diesel vehicles.
He gets especially erratic when he talks about NO and being greenhouse negative. NO is NOT something you want in the atmosphere, and it in no way would be greenhouse negative since the goal of modern diesel vehicles is to limit NOx and soot due to the negative effects of both in terms of human health.
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Even to be mentioned in the same sentence as the great Creimer, Mangler of Language! The honour...it is too much!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
On my desktop I can see the link at the end of the Title on both the main and story pages but it's not there on my phone.
Here's the Guardian article, here's Transport&Environment's press release and the briefing and study.
They likely didn't consider ethanol powered cars because ethanol is a terrible fuel. Thailand is a tropical nation and so can grow plants that are more efficient at converting sunlight into fuel. Much of the rest of the world is not so lucky. Here's some data comparing the different plants:
http://withouthotair.com/c6/pa...
Any biomass fuel is terrible at converting sunlight into energy we can use. Why it's being used so much now boggles the mind. The math is not hard to figure out. We'd be better off using that land for solar panels to charge batteries. Even better is using that land to grow food and look for energy from somewhere besides the sun. Where would be a better place to go for energy? Anywhere. When food competes with energy then you'll have people needing to decide if they will have to cut down their apple tree for firewood and risk starvation in the summer, or keep the tree and risk freezing to death in the coming winter.
You can claim some future advancement in genetically engineered crops and/or better biomass conversion will change this but that's not going to happen in ten years. Go ahead and try, but I think we'll need a backup plan.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The very best cars might be around 30% efficient. The average car is not. So lets compare with the very best coal plant then. That runs at 49% efficiency for electricity generation and over 90% for thermal efficiency as it is also used for district heating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Though I admit most plants are not as efficient as this. However due to fracking there is no so much abundant natural gas that a combined cycle gas power plant with an efficiency just short of 60% is a better bet because the produce cheaper electricity due to cheaper fuel and being cheaper to run
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The side effect of the switch to gas is that you roughly half the amount of CO2 produced going from 910kg per MW/h down to 500kg.
Note that 81% of new power plants in the USA between 2000 and 2010 where natural gas. This is what is and continues to kill coal. Nobody wants it.
Hydrogen cars don't have that nice energy recuperation feature of electric cars. Hydrogen-hybrids on the other hand...
If you look at the figures for some the the eastern European nations, the EV is about the same as the reference ICE figures.
The usual argument for EVs is that it's easier to replace a few power stations with something less polluting than it is to replace every car. It's also likely easier to do carbon sequestration and to filter particulates from a large industrial installation than from a few million tiny portable generators.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Not disputing anything you said, but the summary and you both mention growing efficiencies w/o mentioning the fact that vehicles of all kinds have been getting more efficient. Now if one tech is improving faster than the other (is there evidence of that?) than we should point to that. Otherwise it seems to be a bit of a "so what?".
Just another day in Paradise
The first diesel engine ran on peanut oil. in fact, diesel fuel does grow on trees
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Incidentally, the Prius is a waste of a hybrid engine. The problem is the U.S. measures fuel economy in MPG. Fuel economy is actually GPM - how much fuel you burn to travel a fixed distance. Because MPG is the inverse of fuel economy, the bigger MPG gets, the less fuel is saved per mile driven. This is why the CAFE standards use a harmonic mean. That corrects for MPG being the inverse of fuel economy. e.g. Suppose you're going to travel 100 miles.
6.25 MPG tractor trailer = 16 gallons consumed
12.5 MPG SUV = 8 gallons consumed
25 MPG sedan = 4 gallons
50 MPG Prius = 2 gallons
100 MPG supercar = 1 gallon
Notice how every time you double MPG, the fuel saved is only half the previous step? The 12.5 MPG jump from a Suburban to a sedan saves you 4 gallons, while the what many people assume-to-be-bigger 25 MPG jump from a sedan to a Prius only saves you 2 gallons.
In other words, if the true goal here is to reduce fuel consumption, we should be concentrating on improving the efficiency of trucks. That's where we should be trying to add hybrid powertrains. Converting an economy car into a hybrid is barely worth the trouble. The MPG increase may seem big, but it's an almost insignificant amount. If you can improve a tractor trailer's economy from 6 MPG to 7 MPG (just a 1 MPG improvement or 17%), you've saved more fuel per mile driven than switching from a sedan to a Prius (a 25 MPG improvement or 100%). 100/6 - 100/7 = 2.38 gal saved per 100 miles. Vs 100/25 - 100/50 = 2 gal saved per 100 miles. You know how environmentalists scoffed at hybrid SUVs? That was actually one of the best types of vehicles to convert into a hybrid.
To avoid this problem of inverse fuel economy, the rest of the world uses liters per 100 km, which is analogous to GPM and a correct measure of fuel economy. This is the problem I have with the current push for clean energy - so much of it is about appearance and bragging rights (including calling EVs zero emissions when they clearly aren't), instead of actual results.
It is also a fact that as older you get, as harder it will be to drive and to react in a timely manner.
Only if they drive rarely.
The best drivers I have met where all around 70 years old, more or less driving daily. Usually never having an accident over 50 years or more.
They don't have to prove anything to anyone, they just pay attention and drive safely.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.